


Song to the Cupid

by Le_King



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blowjobs, Destiel - Freeform, Humor, Kink, M/M, Michael is a dickbag, Not a death fic, Rimming, True Love, True Love's Kiss, angel!fic, but then not really, explicit buttsex, important subplot, no really pay attention to the ducks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:28:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Le_King/pseuds/Le_King
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean falls in love with Castiel the moment he first lays eyes on him. </p><p>It's love, it's beautiful and sweet and sexy. Dean knows exactly what kind of love it is because he's a cupid, and he accidentally stabbed himself with a love arrow. Castiel is not amused, especially when the arrow was meant for Castiel and Michael's happily ever after. </p><p>But to hell with it. Dean wants Cas for himself so he stalks him around until Castiel likes him, and Michael is kind of an asshole anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Human Food and Accounting

 

# Human Food and Accounting

“Dude. No. Just no,” Dean tells Sam and takes a long pull of his beer. _You had a good run,_ Dean tells him, _pass it to someone else_ , he tells him, because at some point some time ago the whole thing went from knee-slappin’ floor-rollin’ panty-droppin’ hilarious to Sam-you-will-seriously-die-trying-please-stop kind of situation, and Dean wasn’t going to lose his precious little moose to a stupid job.

“No, but get this,” Sam begins, but loses his thought somewhere along the tagline. He gives up trying to remember and decides whining is a better idea anyway. “I don’t understand,” he bawws, “I shoot him, he drops, done. All he has to do is stand still. Why won’t he stand still and just let me shoot him, Dean? Why? What’s wrong with him?”

Dean doesn’t really get it, either.

He helped Sam swipe Castiel’s employee registration after Sam’s something like fifteenth attempt to penetrate an Angel of the Lord with an Arrow of Love had failed. The form, which is now the crowning jewel on Sam’s dartboard, describes Castiel as a diligent, industrious, assiduous and hard-working hard worker who is effective as an individual and a part of the team. Castiel’s skill set is vast, Castiel’s employment history is solid.  Castiel’s hobbies include eating human food and waiting patiently for the next workday to begin. Castiel has a vast experience in smiting cities and accounting.

Castiel, by all means, should understand better than anyone the joy bestowed upon him, and so he should _stand the fuck still and take a fucking arrow to the face and let Sam move on with his fucking life._

But alas, no God’s plan in uniting two star-crossed lovers is ever truly easy.

“I mean he fucking _dodges_ my arrows. I thought my aim was off or something, but that was the first _forty_ times. He dodges them! Come on!”

Dean appreciates the fact that it’s Sam who has to spend forty naked days on a dude who seems to be immune to love.

Shit is okay with humans. Humans can’t see naked cupids shooting freaking weapons at them.

Add angels, demons, that kind of thing, and shit always gets hella awkward. There are only so many times Dean can take strange non-human men staring at his dick and telling him to politely put on some clothes and that the nudist non-human beach is on the other side of town.

 _Yes_ , Dean very consciously strokes the fabric of his jeans, _better Sam than me_. He loves jeans. Jeans, and clothes and general, are nice.

“Maybe you should upgrade,” he tells his devastated brother and waves a gun in the air. “Bows are so overrated.”

“That’ll just freak him the fuck out.”

“Yeah, like some giant naked dude with antlers stalking him across the world with a bow and arrow won’t freak him out.”

“That’s just you,” Sam tells him pointedly, “people freak out when they see your ugly face with a freakin’ _gun_. I get great reviews on Yelp. Everyone loves me.”

“Not Castiel,” Dean sings, and his brother once again plunges into the deep and emotional sorrow that plagues him if he one, fails his assignments, or two, it’s Saturday and that nerd show about an alien kidnapper with a blue Porta-Potty is on and one of them forgets to set the PVR.

Sam gets emotional easily.

Dean knows this.

That is why he made a point to bring Sam a box of tampons and some low calorie yogurt.

“Tell you what, man,” Dean cringes at the very thought of doing an assignment with his brother. Dean, unlike Sam, is not fond of flashing his junk around. Dean is absolutely in no way hell no not okay when Sam walks around the house in his Uniform. But just this once, Dean will live it down and help his brother out of the goodness of his heart. For a small fee of a tutorial in torrenting cartoon porn.  Nothing fancy. “I’ll go with you this time, I’ll hold your Castiel down or something.”

Sam stares at him incredulously with joyous tears of joy and joyfulness in the corners of his Barbie eyes. He is grateful, and Dean waves it off as nothing. He grabs another beer and makes his way across the dirty carpet of their shared apartment without another word.

He reads Arrow tag poison from Sam’s tear-soaked assignment and etches the poison into his bullets. He loads his gun, they shed their clothing on the couch like this is a script of a very low-budget porno, and disappear with a thin flutter of tiny pink cupid wings.

This is work.

Work is about love and feelings and emotions and connections and all that shit.

Dean can never quite figure out why cupid.com never drove actual flesh-and-bone-and-celestial-intent cupids out of business. Maybe then the bastards upstairs would assign them real jobs like smiting cities and accounting. 

If Dean had one word in it, or just enough words in it for a rant, he’d have his way. But he didn’t have a word in it. Orders were orders and even cupids were angels and if he wasn’t good enough for anything other than shooting up bastards with love, he might as well use a huge fucking gun to shoot _love_.

Yes. Work is something Dean likes to contemplate inside his mind.

It is very difficult to do this, however, once he lands ankle-deep in blood.

Human blood.

It smells like blood, too, it’s all around them, in the grotesque paintings of guts on the walls and mud-pools on the ground. It stains the dark street and runs down the manholes like sewage, and it is red, and it comes from dead bodies, and the bodies it doesn’t come from aren’t bleeding only because they are ash statues.

Well, that escalated quickly. 

The scene is so overwhelming Dean covers his mouth with his hand. To his left, Sam does, too, but he doesn’t look overwhelmed. He looks like he has seen this exact scene in an excess of forty times. He is desensitized to it.

Dean is not.

He looks around, shell-shocked and wide-eyed. He scans the carnage and finds only the face he had imagined to be the cause of every kitten up a tree and every Kleenex he had to pass Sam. Castiel stands tall among the leveled landscape of the bloodbath.

His smite hand is smoking.

_So much for the accounting notation on his resume._

He is closer to Dean than he is to Sam, and Dean is only glad to provide a barrier between that thing and his baby brother. Forty times. Dean had let Sam try to take potshots at this thing forty times.

There are wrinkles of regret on the angel they are supposed to force in love. They are deep frown lines on his face and deep scars on his hands. They are scars of things Dean had never dreamt of doing in his worst nightmares,  and Dean isn’t all that convinced this isn’t a nightmare because fuck, here he stands, naked, between his brother and a battle angel, and he is armed with a freaking love gun.

It’s dangerous here. He feels the danger in the electric spikes in the air. But he doesn’t hear the danger on the radio.

The waves Castiel is emitting are soothing. He stands solemn and looks over his work, probably honoring the memory of all those he smote. Dean doesn’t know this, but he can feel it. It feels strange. It soothes his soul. He is alone in Castiel’s little bubble of electric serenity.

But of course, he isn’t.

“CAS-TI-EL,” Sam calls out, and at once Dean’s private moment with himself and his own imagination is over. “MY NAME IS SAM WIN-CHES-TER,” he shouts in slow syllables like he isn’t sure Castiel even speaks _language_ , and though Dean can’t see why yelling would help, he goes along with it. “I AM A CU-PID. I HAVE AN ARROW FO-”

At once, the scars of time that have been rather kind to Castiel’s pretty face change from being scars of time to wrinkles of the most pathetic and ridiculous kind of annoyance Dean had ever seen in his very, very long career of having shit annoyed with him.

“Hello again, Sam,” Castiel interrupts Sam’s shouts with a low marble-gargling baritone, and at once Dean feels like he’s third-wheeling a bad post-breakup. “And friend,” he adds and nods at Dean.

Very suddenly, Dean feels like he’s in that dream where he’s naked in front of his entire class in high school.

Except that he is, actually, y’know. Naked.

“Dean,” Dean tries to sound casual.

“Hello, Dean.” Castiel says and politely keeps his eyes on Dean’s eye-level.

Dean does not.

His eyes trace the dark mess of hair atop a scruffy-looking angel, and though a shiny pair of really nice blue eyes is something that should’ve kept Dean’s attention – and they do – Dean is the kind of guy who can’t ignore pretty things for the life of him.

And it isn’t that Castiel is pretty.

He’s manly. He has coarse stubble on his pronounced chin, his lips are full and pale, and it’s really a shame real angels have real uniforms unlike the birthday suit Dean’s cupidness forces him to not-wear.

And clothes are nice. They are. But the dirty trenchcoat Castiel wears does his lean and toned body no justice. Dean can tell there is muscle under all those layers. He can tell because he is standing in the middle of a city block Castiel had single-handedly euthanized.  

He can’t let himself forget this.

His body does not let him forget this, because it stiffens and he is ready to grab Sammy and run the fuck away if the smite-happy angel decides to smite them.

“I’m – here – to – shoot – you – with -,” Sam switches from eleven to something like six, but still speaks slowly, and Dean has to suppress a chuckle when the Angel of the Lord rolls his eyes up to heaven and mutters something Dean lip-reads as ‘ _oh Lord, really? Really?’_ And lip-reading is totally a legitimate reason for Dean to be staring at another dude’s lips. It has nothing to do with the way he likes the way they move around the air. It's all strictly professional and nothing like that.

He shakes it off.

 “Listen, buddy,” he interrupts Sam’s excellent public relations skills, “cupid Sam here got a job, I’m cupid Dean by the way, if you can’t tell,” he swallows and gestures to his naked body, but Castiel’s blue eyes remain on his own. “So this is how it’s gonna go down. We’re gonna shoot you. It’s not gonna hurt. If you don’t want us to shoot you, s’fine, we’re gonna give you an arrow and you’re gonna poke yourself with it. A scratch’s all it takes. Sounds good?”

It does not sound good to Castiel.

He doesn’t say this, of course, he just turns to leave.

Turns.

To leave.

Turns his back on Dean.

A Dean with a love gun.

Dean shrugs like the whole thing is really stupid to begin with, takes aim - though he doesn’t really have to aim at all because Castiel is only a few feet away - and empties the entire magazine.

Into thin air.

No, seriously. They all freakin’ miss.

Dean can hear the bullets hit walls yards away. He hears empty shells fall into the red gunk under his bare feet.

He stares at Sam, and Sam has this smuggest bitchface on, like, _I told you so._

Dean refuses to accept this.

He understands now.

Obviously, they are both drunk on their one-and-a-half beers and maybe his aim is bad at shooting angels in the back pretty much point blank. This has to be it. There is no other explanation. Castiel must want to be shot, because who doesn’t? and they are just bad at their job. Yes.

Meanwhile, Castiel is still slow-mo walking away like a classy motherfucker, like he forgot he has wings or something.

Dean reloads and empties another magazine into walls.

Gunshots echo, but they hit nothing. Dean is out, and in his rage he stomps across the red street and grabs Sam’s bow.

Sam’s bow is a small girl bow, totally unfit for Dean’s manly hands.

Dean is so manly, in fact, that he doesn’t feel the injury until they return home empty-handed.

He shoots a love arrow at Castiel, and alas, it misses. But the arrowhead poisoned with love cuts Dean’s palm as he tries to load it, and at once Dean falls in love with Castiel.

* * *

 

That has to be it.

Totally.

The fucking scratch on his palm.

Dean rinses and rinses it in the sink, but he knows all too well that the poison of a cupid’s arrow is magical and rainbowy and not actual physical poison. But he can’t get Castiel out of his mind and he tries to rub the very thought of him out of his skin. He worries the scratch until it becomes a large tear in the skin of his palm, but angel lips and field of murder return into his mind and won’t let him sleep, or eat, or be alone in the privacy of his mind.

Even good ol’ Plant can’t keep his mind clear because suddenly every song Led Zep had ever recorded is about Castiel, Castiel’s lips, Castiel’s wild hair, the thrill and the danger and the musk of his scent, everything is Castiel and Dean can’t get rid of him no matter how hard he scrubs.

He almost slams his fist into a mirror but decides they can’t afford his tantrum, so he punches a wall instead. The bathroom tiles remain in their slots, thankfully, and so does Castiel, nestled up into his slot in Dean’s brain, all cozy and shit, that bastard.

What the fuck was Sam thinking keeping a reverse arrow in the same quiver. Who the fuck does that. That’s against every fucking protocol in the book. You do not keep arrows for lover A in the same place you keep arrows for lover B.

But apparently Sam does, damn him to hell, and Dean finds that he is absolutely obsessed with Castiel.

Castiel this, Castiel that. Castiel in his bed, Castiel on his kitchen counter, Castel on the floor. Castiel in the bathtub, in the cupboard, in his coffee, in a bar of soap. Castiel everywhere.

And it’s not like Dean can report the incident.

He can’t report it because he shouldn’t’ve been there. He can’t report it because Sam’s fuck-up with the arrows would cost them both their licenses. Hell, he can’t even tell Sam because Sam would go all Disney-princess on him. He’s stuck, he’s frustrated, and he’s obsessed.

“You okay in there?” Sam raps on the bathroom door.

“Yeah,” Dean grunts.

“Yeah? You sure?” Sam screeches, at once alarmed Dean told him ‘yeah’ instead of telling him to go knit a sweater or something.

“Go knit a sweater, Sammy,” he barks.

Sam is at once convinced everything is fine.

“Well, hurry up, I need to pee.”

Dean is not considerate of Sam’s bodily urges.

Sam can go and use a bush outside like a bitch they both know he is.

Dean has worse problems to consider, like what the fuck is he supposed to do when Castiel leaves his mind and sips into his groin. What then? Dean has a job that pretty much requires the opposite of a trenchcoat-packaged Viagra.

He can just picture it in his head. There he would be, ass-naked, about to strike some assignment bastard with love, and then suddenly a pine cone on the ground would remind him rather of the color of Castiel’s coat.

Boink.

“You gonna shoot me with what, exactly?” the assignment bastard would say.

Dean would die.

Like, die.

And then roll over in his grave every time the assignment bastard would tell the story to his therapist.

And it isn’t stalking.

It isn’t.

It’s just following Castiel around wherever he goes until Dean eventually sees enough scary shit to get some sense knocked into him to learn to experience love from afar. Very, very far.

 Dean tunes the radio to Castiel and finds him resonating across half of Russia. Well, he thinks, at least he’s lucky Castiel isn’t hiding, but he strongly suspects that’s only because nobody in their right mind would go after a seraph on steroids, except maybe two idiot cupids with pretty much the worst judgment in the world.

He decides to leave his gun behind, and tries not to think about what that does for his dignity.

He strips his clothes, turns the shower on, and leaves the bathroom locked from the inside to prolong the suffering of Sam’s bladder. He takes flight and lands St. Petersburg.

Florida.

Damn, maybe his aim _is_ off, maybe he has his reserves about leaving America and going to chill with the commies, or maybe it’s self-preservation, because when he lands on a statue of Lenin in the St. Petersburg of the _correct_ country, he lands into a dust cloud of ash.

At least nothing is bleeding, but it’s only because it got seriously overcooked.

Dean wonders what in the world would prompt so many executions, he wonders how Castiel can just go along with this shit and not even blink, and he tries not to wonder because it’s not his place. He thinks Castiel probably thinks it’s not his place to question orders, either.

So Dean just sits on Lenin’s head and watches him. Castiel sticks out like a vertical carrot on a barbeque; everything around him is dead and flat on the ground, and he is the only one standing, so his metaphor is good, Dean decides. Castiel stands and breathes evenly and recites the names of the dead in his head, giving them their last rites and honor, and Dean watches in fascination as the blue eyes flicker from murder to kindness.

If Castiel knows Dean’s there, he doesn’t show it. At best, he ignores Dean, gum-under-the-shoe kind of ignoring, and goes about his business, and by the time Dean finds him in Moscow and flies to him, a block of Moscow is already devastated and dead.

They jump around like that for a while, across the entire span of the former superpower, sightseeing fancy churches and smoldering streets, and Dean never quite sees Castiel _do_ it, and he doesn’t want to, not really. He just wants to ask him why and maybe even ask him to stop.

“Stop following me,” Castiel drones evenly into the deserted yard of Saint Isaac's Cathedral. Dean leans against the pointy end of the golden dome some three hundred and thirty three feet up in the air, and he can still hear Castiel’s hoarse voice from the ground level. It’s clear as a bell, commanding and low and sexy, and Dean gets an impression Castiel doesn’t really shout.

It’s five AM, the place is deserted, and for once they didn’t land in the middle of a scene that would give CSI high production value. They are alone, save a few priests who can’t really see them anyway. Dean hesitates before descending, but Castiel is just so damn _alluring_ and _attractive_ that Dean can’t help it but go to him.

“No,” he tells Castiel, and Castiel doesn’t look like something Dean would want to poke with a ten-foot pole, so he leaves eleven feet of distance between them.

Castiel frowns at his simple answer. His stare is intense. He scrutinizes Dean with his blue eyes, and Dean feels naked and exposed, but that’s probably just because he is naked and exposed.

“You aren’t armed, you aren’t trying to tag me with an arrow,” Castiel observes and Dean shrugs. “You are spying on me,” he concludes. “Go away.”

“Whatever,” Dean tells him, “can’t tag you anyway. Out of bullets, and you’re Sam’s assignment, so ‘til he gets more tags, no can do.”

Castiel makes an agreeable face and nods in agreement, and Dean wonders if he would believe him if he told the dude the world was one giant marshmallow.

“So, um,” he says, and forgets he shouldn’t be saying anything at all.

“Are you cold?”

“What?”

“Are you cold?” Castiel repeats, and Dean’s slow on the uptake today.

“Oh,” he shrugs, “no, I’m not cold, I’m cupid, hello? Really good temperature tolerance here.”

But Dean has a sneaking suspicion this wasn’t what Castiel was asking, so he straightens his shoulders and tries to act as casual as a man without a scrap of cloth between his ass cheeks could act when he was talking to another man he happens to find very attractive.

“Do you like it,” Dean finds himself blurting out like a third grader at a show-and-tell. The _naughty_ kind of show-and-tell.

Castel tilts his head. He is confused.

Dean mentally kicks himself in the face because, _holy fuck_ , worst context ever, and holy fuck is he lucky to get probably the only dude on the planet who did not take that the really awkward and really wrong way.

“Your job, I mean,” Dean tells him, and sees understanding flash across the pretty blue eyes. _Good_ , he decides. Communication established.

“Orders have little to do with liking them,” Castiel explains with that hoarse, raspy voice that sends a million arrows straight into Dean’s heart. Dean agrees. Orders are orders.

“But if you liked doing what you do,” Dean asks again, very sure that Castiel doesn’t, “would it be easier to follow them?”

Castiel hesitates before answering this time. He presses his lips together and chews on them, clearly contemplating eternity or something, while Dean stands dumbly and imagines how those lips would feel against his skin.

“No,” he answers after an eternity passes and the church yard fills with people.

Dean is relieved this is Castiel’s answer.

He is also relieved nobody but Castiel can see him, because appearing stark-naked in the Backyard of the Lord has to be some sort of unspoken blasphemy, even for cupids.

Castiel sees his plight and puts him out of his misery.

He disappears into thin air before Dean even realizes there was movement in the space-time continuum. That’s how he dodges the bullets, Dean realizes. The motherfucker is fast and deadly and lethal and cool and hot.

The exercise establishes exactly the opposite of what Dean was trying to establish. 

He returns to the bathroom a lot more frustrated and a lot more gooey inside. He turns off the shower and dresses himself, unlocks the door and finds Sam lying in the fetal position by the door.

“Dude,” his brother whines, half-dead and oozing fluids from every pore. “You took a six-hour shower. I fucking hate you. Die.”

 Dean doesn’t die; he doesn’t contort and suffer the Exploding Bladder Disorder no matter how much Sam wishes it upon him, but he suffers, love-struck and love-smitten. He pins for Castiel, he wonders what Castiel is doing, wonders if Castiel’s thinking about a dirty, naked cupid creeping him from the rooftops all night.

He wonders if Castiel has a story.

He has to. There has to be more to him than ‘ _likes human food, likes to wait for the next workday to start, likes accounting._ ’

Ah, but what kind of human food does Castiel like?

Maybe scallops and risotto and like, clams and shit, and all those fancy food things Dean heard Chef Ramsey yelling about being raw on _Hell’s Kitchen._ Castiel is scruffy-looking, but only in his clothes. He is proud and strong and stubborn and pretty cool and probably high maintenance.

Dean spends the day considering buying Castiel something fancy but realizes he has no idea what a scallops are made from, forget what they look like before they become rubbery circles of getting booted from the show, and never mind where the fuck they would even sell those.

Eventually, Dean decides _fuck it_ because everything is stupid anyway.

Before he can catch himself, with a fist to the face that is, he arrives at an A&W, clothes and wallet and normality, and orders their most expensive burger. He spends like six bucks on it.

He then goes to a print shop. Half-way done with printing out graphs and numbers from Google and getting weird stares from technologically educated people, Dean decides the Double Mozza is not a good-enough courting gift, so he eats it, finishes printing, shoves a stack of papers into the A&W paperbag and minds the grease, goes to White Spot and orders a much fancier burger, drops it into the same paperbag, loses his clothes in an alley and goes to find Castiel.

It’s the ass-crack of dawn in Russia.

Castiel sits on a bench by a river without carnage surrounding him. It’s around the same time he ditched Dean yesterday, so he must be finished with his nightly round.

He sits and contemplates peacefully, and Dean feels kinda bad for interrupting his view of the Neva scenery with his unannounced streaking party, but to hell with that, because Castiel looks upset.

As upset as probably not at all. Dean doesn’t see it in his face, but the static electricity around Castiel is a little more intense and the calming resonance is not at all calming.

Castiel ignores him at first, and Dean is more than happy to be eleven feet away from him, but he feels torn between closing the distance and running to the very edge of a planet when Castiel pierces the silence with that intense voice of his: “why are you always naked, Dean?”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Because it’ll look weird if an off-duty cupid was stalking an angel,” he explains like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“But you _are_ off-duty, and you _are_ stalking me,” Castiel reasons.

“But it’ll look weird. “

 _My logic is sound,_ Dean tells himself. His sound logic is confirmed when Castiel says “I see” very agreeably.

“So, um. I brought you this,” Dean says across the wide distance between them, and the bright blue eyes slide along the river water and to his side until they meet Dean’s, and Dean’s cupid heart skips a beat. “It’s a gift,” he offers and shakes the paperbag.

Castiel looks at it, than at Dean, than at it again, and Dean thinks it’s really rude to make Cas stand up from his comfy bench, so he inches towards him slowly, and the angel rolls his eyes to heaven and asks it why it has to be _him_ and not Steve from HR.

Dean drops the bag on the very edge of Castiel’s bench and moonwalks away.

Castiel sighs and shakes his head. “Thank you,” he eyes the gift and takes it. His face lights up when he opens the brown bag. “It is…a burger. And NASDAQ’s quarterly financial report printout. You got me NASDAQ’s quarterly financial report, Dean. And a burger.”

Dean shrugs.

“We stole your file.”

“Yes, I can tell,” Castiel answers solemnly and closes the bag with remorse.

“You don’t like it?” Dean feels his face fall. Maybe he should’ve put more effort into fishing for those scallops.

“It’s not that I don’t,” the angel tells him and composes himself, “it’s just that I don’t know what you used to spike it.”

Now why the fuck couldn’t Dean think of that on his own?

“Didn’t spike it out of the goodness of my heart,” he lies. “I promise.”

Castiel tilts his head and the mess on his head kind of sways in the biting Russian wind. Dean watches him as Castiel watches Dean, and Castel really likes his dramatic pauses, Dean learns, because after enough time passes he opens the paperbag again and fishes out the White Spot half-pounder and offers it to Dean. “You first,” he says seriously, like he didn’t just offer to share his burger with a creepy naked rapey dude.  

But what the hell, it’s not like Dean can resist the love poison of his own arrow.

He plops his naked ass on the bench because he doesn’t want to seem too forward by standing crotch-level with Castiel’s pretty face. He sits, minds the space when the angel inches away from him to his edge of the bench, and takes Castiel’s hand into his own.

The hand that’s holding the burger out to him; that hand. He cups that calloused and precious hand into his own and enjoys the texture of it under his fingertips. He leans in and takes a generous bite of Castiel’s gift burger.

“S’good” he says around a mouthful like a slob he knows he is, and Castiel smiles at him softly and takes a bite of his own.

He likes it. Dean can tell he likes it.

But does he like Dean?

Castiel disappears before Dean can ask him.

* * *

 

“No, but get this,” Sam begins and actually remembers to follow it through this time. “I gave up the assignment,” he says, and Dean’s heart sinks like a giant unsinkable boat with too few life-rafts.  

“Why,” he says, “I mean, good for you,” he says, “but why,” he says, “we almost had him, I mean.”

“No, we didn’t,” Sam bitches because he is a self-deprecating little girl whom Justin Bieber didn’t marry. “You saw him, if he doesn’t want to be shot, he won’t be shot. He’s probably one of those supersoliders they were engineering upstairs for the last millennia. I can’t do it. Someone else can go ahead and handle it. He’s not worth the effort.”

Dean very much begs to differ.

Castiel is worth all the effort in the world as far as Dean is concerned, but he doesn’t tell Sam this. He also doesn’t tell Sam that yes, there are in fact much more experienced cupids than his misleadingly large baby brother. Gunmen, assassins even, snipers, grenade-tossers, special ops kinds of cupids who probably _could_ land a love arrow into Castiel’s defenseless back.

Dean’s heart is a third-class man and thus it doesn’t get a life-raft. The boat sinks in the Atlantic, and Dean lets go of the floating door and plunges into the icy depths.

He can’t have Castiel.

He knows this. He can’t have him because he is a stupid cupid who accidentally shot himself with a love arrow. He can’t have Castiel because Castiel is destined to love another.

It’s a destiny Castiel seems keen on avoiding by dodging love arrows, so Dean thinks he has a chance, or, at least, _thought_ he had a chance until Sam gave up the assignment and gave Castiel’s fate to someone actually capable of forcing someone else’s love onto Dean’s precious angel.

“When will they reassign the job?” Dean asks casually because he isn’t freaking out, not at all.

“Tonight.”

And so Dean storms off even more casually. He leaves no evidence of an upcoming tantrum in his wake.

He doesn’t know where Castiel is. He doesn’t know where he goes when he is off-duty, he doesn’t know anything about him except burgers and tax reports and Russia and benches, but he wants to know, he wants to know everything, he wants Castiel to open his pretty lips and tell him everything there is about him with kisses on the lips, but Castel is so distant and so annoyed and so damn beautiful.

Dean flies around the benches of Earth. He is slower than actuall angels, but he is efficient, and it takes him hours to find Castiel feeding ducks at a duck pond in St. Petersburg, Florida.

What do you know.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel greets him with his back, and Dean is careful not to spook the duck that’s viciously chewing on Castiel’s finger.

Dean is out of breath because he spent the last couple of hours stumbling around the world, so his voice is labored when he blurts out “they reassigned your case.”

Castiel doesn’t understand.

“Sam’s case on you,” Dean explains. “He gave it up, so it’ll go to someone more… capable. So you be careful, y'know?”

Dean doesn’t really know what possesses him to open his heart like that, and Castiel is not confused about the part that matters. His blue eyes leave the violence the duck is doing onto his mangled fingers. They focus on Dean, and Dean stands a polite eleven foot distance away, panting heavily and probably sweaty all over.

“Thank you, Dean,” Castiel says. “I will.”

Dean feels a little bashful, and Castiel levels him with another pointed stare. He sighs, stands up from his bench, and the duck quacks angrily and flaps its wings in a tantrum. It runs at Castiel’s feet and attacks his dress pants, but the angel ignores it and makes his way to Dean.

Holy crap.

There is a blue tie under that coat. The tie is backwards, and the dress suit that doesn’t really match is in dire need of ironing. Dean realizes this because Castiel takes off his coat as he approaches Dean’s rooted nakedness.

The coat is heavy. It’s heavy and worn and warm against Dean’s bare shoulders. It smells like Castiel’s musk. It’s nice.

Castiel drapes it over Dean’s naked body and Dean blinks stupidly.

_Do not blush do not blush do not blush-_

“Dean, your face is red, do you have a fever?”

_Fuck._

Dean quickly shoves his hands into the sleeves and ties the belt of the coat around his waist, Heaven forbid that blush goes somewhere else he really doesn’t want Castiel to see.

“Well, now I just look like a serial flasher,” Dean tells Castiel, and Castiel smiles at him, not with his mouth, but with his eyes. His smile is reserved and pleasant and Dean likes it. “Thanks,” he says, “it’s a good old coat,” he says, “I like it on you,” he says, “I like you.”

Castiel doesn’t seem to mind. The duck is attacking Dean’s naked legs now, jealous and possessive, and Dean wants to kick it so it would shut up and fuck off. But he has a feeling Castiel likes the duck, so Dean doesn’t hurt it. He focuses on the lines on Castiel’s face, on his smooth temples and creased forehead and light stubble, and their faces are close and the duck is annoying and all Dean can think about is closing the distance between them.

He needs an excuse.

One arrives to him shortly and he smacks himself mentally for not thinking of it sooner.

He spreads his arms wide and does his best Jesus, and of course the belt comes undone and yup, there he is, Dean Winchester, flashing his love interest, that just happened, move on. This isn’t the worst of it for Castiel, because before he can pull his supersoldier Houdini, Dean clamps his arms around him and nestles his naked front into Castiel’s clothed front and squeezes all air out of him.

Castiel smells really good. He is warm and he fits snugly into Dean’s hug, but oh doth he protest too much. But then again, everyone protests cupid’s greetings, so that’s fine.

“Dean,” Castiel manages with the first breath Dean allows him, “unf. Why?”

“I just love hugs,” Dean drones with deathly seriousness into Castiel’s soft neck, “you know?”

“I really have no idea what you talking about, I don’t know, but please put me down.”

Dean complies and feels like a complete jackass as soon as angel shoes touch the ground again.

Castiel straightens himself out and smoothes over his crumpled dignity. “Don’t do that again,” he says but makes no further attempt to get out of Dean’s personal space. “I don’t like it.”

“I know,” Dean confesses. “Nobody likes it. Sorry.”

And then Castiel does the unexpected. His blue eyes are dry from all that blinkless staring, and the angel tries to recover his stoic façade so hard that he forgets to keep them on Dean’s face. He takes a quick swipe down Dean’s body, they both swallow, and Castiel huffs and pointedly closes Dean’s coat.

“Fuck,” Dean swears, which is like the biggest turn-off for angels because they’re polite little shits, but to hell with it. “Can I just kiss you?”

Castiel looks sideways. They are so close he can feel ozone-fresh breath against his cheek. “This is terribly unprofessional,” he says. “You are a cupid, Dean. My cupid. It doesn’t work like this.”

“I know,” Dean agrees, “but it’s not me, it’s you. You’re pretty damn amazing.”

Castiel swells a little at that.

“If you swear to never do… what you just did,” he flexes his shoulders and Dean understands the no-cupid-hugs-ban for what it is, “you may kiss m-mmm.”

Castiel tastes like toothpaste and danger. His lips are rough and chapped, and Dean pecks at them gently until they open for him. And when they do, Dean still pecks at them because he’s afraid this fragile moment will burn and turn into ash and he’ll be left with nothing but sensation and aftertaste and a loss of memory and a feeling of dissatisfaction.

Dean’s too careful and glossy-eyed, he knows he is, and it he really should’ve seen it coming when _smiting-and-accounting_ pulls at Dean’s jaw with his strong fingers and tongues Dean’s mouth. It’s good, really good. Castiel is bossy and strong and Dean opens up for him and coaxes him to get feisty.

It’s hot, it’s messy, and Dean gets half-hard from just thinking of other places that tongue could work open.

Good thing Dean’s sporting a trench coat.

They break apart only when Castiel shoves them apart. His hands are still clenching Dean’s arms, but they’re at arm’s length now, and Dean doesn’t miss air as much as he misses the taste of toothpaste and danger.

 “Go on a date with me,” Dean asks.

Castiel suppresses a small smile. He presses his warm palm to Dean’s forehead and rakes his fingers through Dean’s short hair.

“Maybe when you’re feeling better,” he actually agrees.

“Maybe in an hour,” Dean insists.

“I don’t think-” but it’s too late.

“You, me,” Dean orders, “somewhere nice and Russian. The CIA headquarters in the 1950s.”

If Dean didn’t know any better, he would mistake the subtle noise in the back of Castiel’s throat for a snort.

“Okay,” Castiel actually agrees, and Dean can _see_ that Castiel agrees to the date against his better judgment.

“Okay?” Dean confirms just to make sure his ears aren’t fucking with him.

“Okay,” Castiel says.

“Great. Um,” Dean stutters, “I’ll bring the food. In an hour. CIA. Fifties. Yeah, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Dean shrugs the coat off, folds it lovingly and hands it back to Castiel. He stumbles away without looking too awkward, at least he thinks that’s how it goes.

The duck follows him and relentlessly bites his toes. He wonders if ditching the duck or kicking it away would leave a good impression on Castiel.

He decides he doesn’t know, so he grabs the fucking duck by its neck and flies home.

Turns out, you really shouldn’t grab a duck by its neck.

“Dean, why do you have a duck?” Sam perks up from his nerd porn on TV, “wait, is it dead?”

“Shut the fuck up, Sammy,” Dean grumbles once his bloody toes land on the soft carpet. The duck dangles lifelessly in his clenched fist.

It is, indeed, very dead.

“Damn it,” he curses.

Castiel likes this stupid duck.

Castiel expects better of Dean.

“Do we know anyone who can bring this back to life,” Dean shakes the dead duck in the air.

“Dude…” Sam preaches in his little bitch voice. “Maybe you should… you know what, just… never mind. Balthazar. Call Balthazar.”

Dean puts the dead duck on top of Sam’s TV and calls Balthazar.

“You killed someone?” Balthazar doesn’t believe what he’s hearing.

“Accidentally,” Dean confirms gravely, and Balthazar tells him it’ll cost him a round of shots.

Dean agrees.

“’Kay, where’s the body, mate?”

“Here.”

“Where’s here?” he slurs in thick British.

“My place.”

“You dragged a dead body to your place?”

“Yeah, it’s on top of the TV.”

Balthazar realizes it’s a dead duck Dean is trying to bring back to life only when he sees its lifeless carcass nested on top of the TV just like Dean said.

“What’s wrong with him?” Balthazar asks Sam incredulously.

“Don’t ask,” Sam whines and tries to sit left so that the dead duck isn’t blocking his screen. “Just give him his duck.”

Balthazar places his healing fingers to duck’s feathery forehead.

“Never mind the shots, mate,” he tells Dean, “next time you party, you’re taking me with you. You party hard, you little bastard you.”

The duck Frankensteins to life and quacks its way around the apartment. Sam regards it with a bitchface and cranks the TV volume up so it would tune out the duck. There is a dude in a fez running for a blue Porta-Potty across his TV screen.

Dean is confused two seconds into the show.

Balthazar is long gone.

Dean looks at the clock and realizes he has nine minutes left.

“I have a date,” he declares over the volume and the quacking. “I have… a date,” he freaks out. “The fuck do I wear for a date?”

“Um,” Sam tells him pointedly, “clothes.”

Dean looks down.

“Damn it,” Dean curses because he has no fucking idea where on Earth, literally, he’d left his clothes.

He throws on some pants and a shirt and realizes he’ll be late if he stops to get food. He briefly considers if Castiel would like duck burgers, but decides to be a philanthropist and leaves the annoying quacking thing with Sam because both Sam and the duck are annoying and thus would get along swimmingly.

* * *

 

Dean is twenty fashionable minutes late, but he has a friendly bag of White Spot in his hand, and Castiel looks happy to see it.

 The CIA in the fifties is swarming with tight suspenders, plaid hats, heavy coats, cigarette smoke and lung cancer. Women in long skirts bring men coffee and men accept fake intelligence with raised voices of praise.

Dean hands Castiel a burger and leans against the wall.

“Pick out the Russians,” Dean tells him, and Castiel scans the room. The rules are obvious: _don’t fucking cheat, you shithead,_ and Castiel doesn’t cheat because he points to a cat.

“Seriously?” Dean asks him.

“What’s wrong with my guess,” Castiel mutters around a mouthful of delicious red meat.

“It’s a cat,” Dean tells him.

“Why can’t a cat be a spy?”

“Because it’s a damn cat.”

“But cats are schemers,” Castiel muses. “They always have a plot.”

Dean kind of agrees. Cats are sly little bastards, and he can’t like them anyway because he is allergic to them.

“You look nice, by the way,” Castiel tells him after Dean points out every spy in the room and tells Cas their life story. Incidentally, the scheming cat belongs to a KGB spy, so Castiel’s answer wasn’t technically wrong. 

Dean registers the compliment with a delay.

“I-what? Oh,” he scans his body and notices he’s wearing his house jeans and a worn Aerosmith t-shirt.

He doesn’t look nice, he looks like a poor man’s cosplay of a hipster.

“Not really,” he waves the compliment away and instead wants to tell Castiel that he looks nice because he always looks very nice, but Castiel doesn’t let him say anything.

“You look good in clothes, Dean,” Castiel offers kindly, and Dean feels a little pathetic.

“You don’t like-”

“No,” Castiel interrupts him. His voice is patient, but he is impatient to tell Dean he’s wrong. “Your body is distracting. I somehow doubt you participated in that cupid’s rights to be naked rally last year. You look uncomfortable naked.”

“But do you like me naked?”

Castiel smiles and lights up a room-full of homophobic misogynist human men engaging in general country-on-country douchebaggery.

“Kiss me, Dean,” Castiel tell him. Dean beams and presses his lips to Castiel’s chapped lips, and it's lips everywhere galore. He nibbles and sucks and bites. He enjoys the taste and the texture and the small wounds inside Castiel’s cheeks and the sharpness of his teeth and the warmth of his tongue.

There is an edge to the kiss, like Cas really needs to work out some issues, and Dean manhandles him to a tall plant stand.

Humans are confused why a potted palm suddenly smashes to the ground. _Communists_ , someone grumbles and a woman begins to clean the dirt. They ignore her, and she can’t see them. Dean presses Castiel against the wall and sits him on the plant stand. He slides between his legs and continues kissing him. His hands worship face and skin and stubble, blindly grope around the too-many layers of Castiel’s uniform. They find no secret clothing folds they can enter, so Dean begins the buttons of Cas’ dress shirt and warm hands close around his waist.

Castiel is pulling him in with his strong legs, encouraging him to get darin’, but it all feels a little wrong.

It takes considerable amount effort to peel his face off those wonderful angel lips, and he kisses and kisses and kisses like there is never enough, and then he pecks and Castiel opens his amazing eyes and Dean is finally able to stop.

“What’s wrong?” Castiel asks him.

“I dunno,” Dean tells him and breathes in the musk. “You tell me, Cas.”

Castiel takes a pause because he likes his damn dramatic pauses.

“Cas?” Castiel finally asks. He licks Dean off his lips and pushes against Dean for some space. Dean backs away, and Cas straightens his clothes. “I think I like that,” he declares. But he looks sad, and Dean doesn’t like that one bit.

“You tell me,” Dean insists.

Castiel sighs.

“Do you have that cupid match assignment on you?” he says, and Dean dreads the moment Castiel asks him to help him out of it because he _can’t_. He fucking _can’t_. He’s useless and he can’t do a damn thing, and it would destroy him if Castiel even asks. “Do you?”

Dean nods, and pulls Sam’s assignment sheet from the spot Sam had left it. He is lucky, he supposes, that he remembers where it was and can access it across time.

“It’s-” he begins to read, but Cas presses his palm to Dean’s mouth.

“It was ordered from the top, yes? Nod for yes, shake your head for no.”

Castiel knows it would cost Dean his job if he outright tells him; it’s against every rule in the book to tell him, so a loophole is better than nothing, and Dean somehow thinks Castiel isn’t keen on exploiting loopholes. 

 “From an archangel?”

Dean nods.

“From Michael?”

Dean wonders how Castiel knows this.

“And the target of the matching cupid arrow is…” Castiel’s voice trails and he nods for Dean to flip the page.

And holy _fuck_.

What the _fuck_.

That’s not _fair_.

Dean smacks Cas’ hand away and frowns.

“What a dick,” he tells Cas, “there’s gotta be rules against this.”

“There aren’t,” Castiel shakes his head, and Dean is this close to giving him another cupid hug. He is sorry he can’t help. He will try, though. Damn it all to hell, he will raise hell and try.

“They’re gonna reassign the job in a bit,” Dean tells him. “I’ll tell you who it is and how to avoid them. Don’t mean to brag, but I’m kinda the best in the department,” he rubs the back of his head and Castiel nods in application. “So I know every son of a bitch and--”

And Dean is an idiot.

Dean is the stupidest fucking idiot in all of Father’s creation.

An assignment slip awaits him when he stumbles home and trips over the sleeping duck.

 _Castiel_ , Dean’s new assignment says.

_Human food._

_Waiting for the workday to start._

_Accounting._

_  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Very loosely based on a prompt by nelly452: "can someone please write a fic where Dean is a cupid? and he falls for Cas and Cas is really annoyed."
> 
> 2\. The title is derived from Plant's "Song to the Siren."


	2. It's All Very Serious, Except It Isn't

 

# It's All Very Serious, Except It Isn't

Castiel leans the flat of his back into the doorway and allows his eyelids to shut out the silence of the world around him. He can still feel Dean’s lashes brush softly against his cheeks, and he sighs into nothingness. Dean’s taste lingers on his lips and he touches them with his fingers. He shares a private smile with the palm of his hand.

Dean is sweet, and he lets his mind muse over the idea of the two of them together. Dean is a little bit... Dean. He is reckless and ridiculous and spontaneous, and Castiel wonders if he also happens to be stable and kind.

He shouldn’t think about this.  

He feels petty for even considering Dean’s escapade was anything but just that. The reality is literal and harsh, and Castiel blames himself for taking advantage of the circumstances.

He must have laughed to himself, because Balthazar hears him and comes to greet him.

“You okay?” he soothes Castiel with his grace and places a hand on his shoulder.

Castiel laughs again, softly, and Balthazar’s touch lingers. He is disturbed, Castiel realizes. His laughter disturbs his friend.

“I am quite alright,” he assures Balthazar, but Balthazar does not believe him. “You don’t need to stay here with me, you know.”

“Yeah mate, I do,” Balthazar tells him and inspects the outside surfaces of Castiel for damage he cannot see unless he looks inside. "You are happier." 

“I had a date,” Castiel whispers and presses his fingertips to his lips again.

Balthazar laughs. His laughter is a pleasant and cheerful sound, and Castiel indulges in it and allows Balthazar to lead him into his living room and sit him on the leather sofa.

The sofa is made, Castiel observes. If this cold and foreign place was his home, Balthazar would never think twice about leaving his belongings so that Castiel could trip over them.

He catches himself and corrects his mistake. This is his home now.

“Moving on so fast?” Balthazar winks at him and Castiel smiles. “What about me? I’m a sport, mate, Michael’s gonna be pissed if you and I do a bit of shagging, yeah—?”

“I am not trying to make Michael angry,” Castiel objects because he isn’t, he really isn’t. He wants Michael to let him go, he wants him to move on, not to anger him any further and give him an excuse to continue making Castiel’s life hell.

Castiel has been to hell. The comparison is just. Hell makes monsters of good men, and Castiel isn’t particularly good, but he knows his value and he believes he isn’t a monster. It hurts him, every order hurts him, it tortures his wounds open and slices deeper into him than any knife or word ever could.

Balthazar senses where Castiel’s thoughts have gone. “He’s still making you smite all those-”

“ _Yes_ ,” Castiel hisses and forgets that patience is a virtue because he doesn’t want to hear the end of that terrible sentence. Balthazar nods and gives distractions.

“Good date?”

“It wasn’t really a date… It was. I suppose it was,” he presses his lips together.

“Nice guy? You asked him out, or…”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. He just followed me. For the last few days, wherever I went, he was there, and he wouldn’t relent. He was sweet.”

“A stalker?” Balthazar is wary and protective at once.

“Somewhat,” Castiel nods and tries to think of a way to describe Dean. “Without any real purpose, I think.”

Balthazar seems confused, and Castiel thinks of ways to explain the situation without offending Dean’s honor. He gives up eventually.

“A heavily intoxicated cupid.”

Balthazar laughs a throaty laugh.

“You got stalked by a naked, drunk cupid?”

Castiel smiles and places his fingertips to his lips again. He can still feel Dean there, as if Dean spiked his lips with love poison and soothed Castiel’s pain with his sweetness.

“Wait, I’ve got a better cupid story,” Balthazar chokes out between giggles. “This cupid, right. Calls me to come to his flat ‘cause he’s got a dead body there. I come, and he’s naked and smashed. I don’t know what to think, I mean, mate, are you coming onto me? Can you even stand straight? And then he tells me to bring his duck back to life. There is a dead duck on the telly, and he looks at me, petrified, like he’d committed murder.”

Castiel presses his fingers to his lips harder until his teeth are biting into thin flesh. He thinks he is blushing.

“Dean?”

“Dean Winchester?” Balthazar echoes.

Castiel smiles, and Balthazar collapses onto the couch and explodes with laughter. His laughter is roaring and comforting, and Castiel is grateful for it. It fills the stillness of the silent house. It makes Castiel feel alive.  

“I mean,” Balthazar manages to resonate against the bare walls of the room, “what the hell is he on?”

“Just alcohol,” Castiel shakes his head. “I felt concerned for his well-being and I checked him. I don’t think he is even aware of how intoxicated he is. He has been at it for a few days, but I think he is coming off it now. Balthazar,” he calls and experiences more impatience. “Balthazar!” he slaps his friend’s leg.

“What?”

“Is he…” Castiel doesn’t know how to ask. _Is he always this eccentric_ , he wants to say. _Is he always this sweet and spontaneous? When he reverts into his normality, will he be just as sweet? Will he even remember me?_

The question that lingers in his mind the one that matters the most to his heart.

_Is Dean kind?_

Castiel had asked himself these very questions when his relationship with Michael was new and exciting. _It is good_ , he told himself, _Michael is good_. Michael was sweet and spontaneous and eccentric. But Castiel had never asked himself if Michael was kind, and when it occurred to him to ask this, he realized thousands of years he had slept in Michael’s bed had all gone to waste.

Balthazar understands what Castiel is asking.

“He’s a good guy,” he tells him. “And I’m not pissin’ on your date or anything-”

“-but I have known him for a day,” Castiel finds it easy to slip into the bad habit of interrupting.

“And you’ve been single for less than a week. I just don’t think Dean’s a good rebound guy. Shit around him usually tends to get complicated.”

“Yes,” Castiel thinks about the complexity of Dean being a cupid. “I know what you mean.”

“Listen,” Balthazar tells him. “He’s a good kid. But you’ve got to sort out your personal issues, mate, and your heart and Michael and the thing and cabbages and ace in the hole sodding blimey shagging knickers bollocks-”

Dean is trying to tune to Castiel’s wavelength and call him.

He is successful in licking at the very outer edge of Castiel’s mind, but they are weak licks. An angel’s channel is reserved for official orders and unofficially for office gossip. Castiel is unsure if Dean’s blabber is faint because he is a cupid and cupids can’t resonate on high-ranking angels’ radios, or simply because he is trying to tell Castiel about a woman who is purchasing a set of stairs to paradise.

“Oi mate brass monkeys doolally grockle plonker?” Balthazar asks him, and Castiel takes great care to leave the frequency open just enough for Dean to thread along its edges and soothe Castiel with his static.

Castiel thinks selfishness feels like this.

“No, Balthazar,” he pays his friend just enough mind to resume translating him, “I don’t think Michael will stop until he is satisfied I won’t come back to him.”

“He’s a smart guy,” Balthazar says reasonably, “he’s only doing this because _you_ aren’t satisfied _you_ won’t come back to him.”

Balthazar is right.

Castiel does not understand why he doesn’t care, but he doesn’t care, and his day is incidentally made brighter by it.

He does not want to sit with Balthazar and be reminded of his own misery.

He wants to go to Dean.

He contemplates leaving Dean to sleep off his misadventure, but Dean’s licks evolve into nails-on-chalkboard, and Castiel wants to go to him, if only to see what is causing the racket.

Balthazar tells him about “quid” and “razzle” and asks him if he’s still listening.

Castiel isn’t listening.

He opens the wavelength and sends Dean a message of inquiry.

He can feel Dean is enthralled by the reply. Castiel feels it across the space between them and it’s a lively feeling, but the message Dean sends back is all screeching and gibberish.

Castiel decides to go to him.

It’s an easy decision, and Balthazar fades in a blur of motion as Castiel leaves his company and flies to Kansas.

He concentrates so hard on landing as close to Dean as he can that he nearly lands on his new friend’s socked toes. He is pleased to observe Dean is not a cupid who enjoys wearing his uniform indoors. He finds it easier to concentrate on Dean’s lips and voice when he isn’t naked.

Dean is surprised to see him.

He jumps at first, but calms his excitement, tells Castiel about personal space, smiles brightly, and resumes… Castiel still doesn’t understand what Dean is doing.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel tries going for the normal, but Dean only smiles and continues speaking to him in ciphers and sounds rather than words. Castiel concludes his radio is in perfect order and Dean’s speech isn’t.

“Dean, I can’t help you fix your electricity.” Castiel answers him.

He takes a moment to understand exactly what he had just refused.

Dean would have never called if he didn’t need this, and Castiel regrets his own uselessness. He wonders if he can manage a small miracle without alerting the miracle authorization department. He decides to try. “I’m sorry,” he apologizes selfishly, “all I can do is try. I don’t know much about Alternating and Direct Currents, but I-”

“AC/DC, you dork. The band.”

“Music,” Castiel understands now. Dean needs the electricity to play music.

“Yeah,” Dean does not slur his words anymore, Castiel observes. His language leaves his lips coherently, and he is easy on Castiel’s ears. “And Led Zap. Led Zeppelin,” he elaborates.

“That sounds like a redundant way to attempt flying,” he tells him, and hopes Dean’s answer is long so he can hear his voice expand in the empty space around them and fill it.

“Well, it works,” Dean tells him, and Castiel is content to grasp at scraps of conversation. “They proved it on Mythbusters, With a balloon, but close enough.”

There is a silence.

Castiel is never one for movies, but from an eternity with Balthazar as his friend he has picked up some things: pornography is not an acceptable genre to watch in public, the man was dead the whole time, the totem would have stopped spinning, it’s always Loki’s fault, Titanic was an abomination, a red shirt means imminent demise, and crickets chirping in the distance mean an awkward silence.

There were no crickets to chirp in the distance in Dean’s apartment. The duck quacking in the distance would have been doubtless happy to eat them if there were any.

Castiel does not have anything to say.

He wishes he did, he wishes words and small-talk were easy for him. But he never has much to say, he only has much to do. Michael knows this, Michael never requires Castiel to talk when he doesn’t want to talk, and when Michael talks he says everything without using many words.

Dean is adamant about talking, about filling their encompassing silence with anything at all.

Dean is not like Michael, but Castiel forgets about Michael when Dean touches him, when he gets tired of watching Castiel stand quietly and uselessly in the middle of his apartment. He takes his hand and leads him to sit on a couch. The hand that isn’t soothing his mind holds a guitar.

“You know what this is?”

“A guitar.”

“Right,” Dean seems impressed, and Castiel wishes he knew guitars beyond only being able to identify them.

He doesn’t. But he feels he needs to say something, so he says “I like it” because it doesn’t seem like a conspicuous things to say.

“You like guitar?” Dean approves, and Castiel immediately regrets misleading him. “You like Plant?”

He knows botany, but he will not lie to Dean again. He shakes his head.

“Don’t like Plant?” Dean’s brows furrow, not in anger but in disappointment, and Castiel decides to come clean.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he confesses.

He does not expect it when Dean nods and says, “I can work with that. C’mere.”

Castiel is here, but he knows Dean means he should come closer to him. He does. He allows their thighs to brush fabric and Dean bumps him with his knee as he settles in.

Castiel finds that he does, in fact, like guitar.

It is a beautiful instrument in Dean’s gentle hands. His fingers dance along its thin neck, brushing softly, pressing hard, scraping the strings with just the tips of his nails, and Castiel is mesmerized by the loving and precise strokes of Dean’s strong fingers.

He strums, the guitar makes noise, and Castiel is lulled into safety and peace by the repetitive motion.

Dean sings to him. He sings to him about sirens in shipless oceans, smiles, eyes and fingers, he sings to him that there he is, there, for Castiel, and Castiel listens to the words and watches Dean’s hands and feels his eyelids drift shut.

Dean is warm, his heart is larger than Castiel knew cupid graces to be. It’s soft and comforting and it smells nice.

“Plant?” Dean whispers to him, mindful not to disturb his peace.

“Hmm?” Castiel hears himself say.

“Like?”

“Like,” he says because he likes Dean.

 Castiel awakes to sun kissing his cheeks through the shutters. He blinks. He feels lazy.

He is missing most of his clothes. His coat lays folded on a desk next to his shoes. His jacket hangs on a hook, his belt is missing. He wonders why he is undressed. He thinks Dean has tried to take advantage of him in his sleep. He decides he doesn’t know how he feels about that.

“Woah there, easy,” Dean catches him when he tries to stand. There is a steaming cup of hot tea in Dean’s hand and he spills some of it on his carpet when Castiel leans heavily against him. “Sit,” he pushes Castiel back on the bed, crouches by his feet and places the tea on a nearby chair. “How you feelin’?”

Castiel is fine. He is tired of being asked this.

“You passed out,” Dean tells him, and Castiel still doesn’t understand why passing out equates to having his clothes removed. “When was the last time you got some shut-eye?”

Castiel rubs his eyes. “A week,” he says. “How long have I slept?”

“Five minutes,” Dean says, and unless Dean suffers from a premature ejaculation condition, Castiel assumes his honor is still intact. He looks around and takes in the mess of Dean’s room. He can see clothes and items shoved under furniture and into corners in a hasty attempt to create an appearance of semi-tidiness; even now, Dean tries to be inconspicuous as he nudges a pornographic magazine out of sight with his foot.

But the room is such a mess that Castiel can’t imagine anyone but Dean living in it.

He must have looked himself over unconsciously because Dean feels a need to set his mind at ease. “Sorry, I got you out of your jackets. You wear way too many jackets, man. I figured it’d be easier for you to catch some z’s without twenty pounds of layers. You should go back to sleep, you know,” he finishes and rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment, “I’ll watch over you.”

 _Oh,_ and a holy fire of Revelation goes off in Castiel’s head. _Oh._ He understands now. He had once seen a human pornographic film about a babysitter calling a pizza man, and he finds it to be a useful tool of reference in understanding behavior. In the film, the babysitter called a pizza man and ordered pizza.

But the babysitter didn’t want pizza because she never ate it; she wanted sex. She had called for a service and was prepared to have sex with whomever came to her.

It isn’t hard to imagine the same scenario with a cupid and an electrician.

Castiel realizes, much to his relief, that Dean did not need any electrical service, he only wanted sex.

Castiel can give it to him.

“I am not tired,” he says and begins to unbutton his shirt. He was told on several occasions that he can pin anyone down with his stare, and so as much as he wants to look Dean in the eye as he does this, he does not want to intimidate him, so he looks away.

“Hey. Hey, hey hey, woah there,” Dean stops his hands and protests when Castiel tries to pull him down onto the bed. “D’you wanna talk about this first or something?”

Castiel does not want to talk about anything. He is tired of being forced to talk about his feelings by Balthazar or Annael, and now by Dean.

Frankly, he wants Dean to shut up, but he wants Dean to stay with him, and he can’t think of a way to keep him with his words.

He decides Balthazar is right. Dean makes for one very complicated rebound person, especially since Castiel never imagined himself to be the one to even go for rebound persons.

But then again, he never imagined leaving Michael after their eternity together.

“’Kay, fine,” Dean says and instead of planting himself between Castiel’s legs and working to rid him of his remaining clothes makes one heap of the messy blankets on the bed and nests Castiel into them. “I’m not really a feelings type of dude, either. I got a better idea. Stay here, drink your tea – it’s Sam’s crap, by the way, I got no clue what’s in it - and I’ll go get my guitar and you’ll get real friendly with Plant. And U2, but if you tell my brother, I’ll kill you,” he finishes his threat with a smile, and Castiel knows he is joking.

He spends the afternoon watching Dean’s hands caress shaft of his guitar.

* * *

 

“You got a really weird mind, Cas.”

They are in Russia now. They sit on top of Kremlin and eat Tula gingerbread. Dean’s never had it, and Castiel stole a whole bag of them so he could feed them to Dean; if Dean doesn’t like them enough to eat a whole bag, then at least Castiel will have no difficulty eating them himself.

Dean doesn’t mind them. He chews the gingerbread absently, but his rate of consumption is about three to one, and Castiel will leave none for him if he doesn’t pick up the slack.

“It’s one of those weird things with deadlines,” Dean tells him once he spots his targets, and Castiel looks ahead and avoids looking at Dean at all costs. Dean is wearing his uniform because he is in the middle of a workday, and Castiel tries not to think about cupid uniforms so he chomps at his gingerbread viciously.

Dean laughs at him but crosses his legs and keeps one hand on his nude lap for the sake of modesty.

He points a half-eaten piece of spice candy at a man walking his dog. “That guy,” he says, “and that dog.” He loads his love gun and cringes a little. “I really didn’t wanna do it, but the deadline’s today and there’s no getting out of it. I dunno why they only give me the really hard shit or the really weird shit.”

“Just do it,” Castiel says and vacuums another piece of Tula, “and don’t follow up on whatever becomes of it.”

“Wouldn’t, even if they paid me,” Dean grumbles, takes aim, and makes a perfect shot. The 9mm catches the dog in the heart yards below them. The dog yelps and tugs at its leash. Dean reloads and makes another excellent shot. The man beams.

Castiel does not want to think about it, so he eats another piece of gingerbread while Dean shoves his into his mouth until protrudes comically.

He wipes the crumbs on off his hand on his thigh before offering it to Castiel. Castiel takes it and allows Dean to gentleman him to his feet. They walk hand in hand along the round slope of the Easter egg dome of Kremlin until they reach its edge.

Dean takes him around his waist, and Castiel holds onto his bag of sweets tightly as they jump domes.

Dean’s new target is a politician woman and her chauffeur, and they settle down and wait for the car accident.

When the time comes, Dean shoots the woman and the man, and two of them experience mutual affection for exactly eight minutes before the man dies from intracranial bleeding and the woman is left with a broken heart.

“Have you ever considered not being a cupid?” Castiel asks him and devours the last of his gingerbread.

Dean considers the question for a while and nibbles on his own last piece absently. He does not seem to want it very much, so Castiel takes it from him and eats it himself.

Dean laughs and kisses his cheek while Castiel is still chewing.

“You ever consider not smiting shit?”

Castiel crumples the empty bag and thinks he really needs to steal more.

“Woah, there. Easy. Forget I asked,” Dean puts his bare hand around his shoulder and holds him in place, “never mind, okay? Why did you ask, though? S’wrong with being a cupid?”

“Love shouldn’t be this complicated and painful,” Castiel grumbles into Dean’s neck.

“Yeah,” Dean says. His face contorts in a dark emotion, and Castiel knows Dean’s body has finally processed the last of the alcohol and began throbbing with a terrible hangover. Dean looks like he is experiencing a painful headache. “Yeah, tell me about it,” he says and kisses Castiel’s forehead. “One more, in Mexico, and I’m home-free. Think of date ideas.”

“A library,” Castiel says immediately, but he knows it’s a bad idea because Dean doesn’t seem like a reader.

“Boring,” Dean rejects it, and strangely enough, Castiel does not feel rejected or put off in any way.

“CPA exam room” is Castiel’s next suggestion.

Dean etches poison for the Mexican couple into his bullets and laughs.

“You take accounting exams _for fun_?”

“I can race you.”

“Nah. I surrender. No go on CPA.”

“White Spot.”

Dean actually considers this.

“How about I just buy you White Spot and we eat it somewhere interesting?”

Castiel is about to suggest a place he thinks is extraordinarily interesting when soft flutter of white feathers folding into his sister’s back startles them both.

‘Startle’ is too little of a word to describe Dean’s reaction, however. Dean nearly jumps out of his skin, drops his gun and poisoned bullets roll off the dome like a rain of love. Somewhere below them, a Russian man falls in love with a Mexican man he has never seen before. But it’s okay because he will never meet him. He will settle for something less.

Dean emerges from the bubble of self-consciousness he only erects around himself when he is around Castiel. He unfolds his legs and deconstructs his modesty, leans back into his elbows and winks at Annael, exposed and completely blatant about it.

“M’lady,” he snares.

She regards both of them evenly, and at once Castiel knows she understands what he and Dean are doing together. She does not smile: she is upset with her job, and Castiel realizes Michael has ordered her to spy on him.

Very well.

 _Let Michael know,_ he thinks at Anna without any spite in his tone.

He does not want to make Michael angry. He doesn’t. But he will not go out of his way to pacify him. He remains in Dean’s arms and makes no indication of intending to go anywhere.

Dean, however, seems uncomfortable, and his dark mood returns.

There is something wrong, Castiel realizes. Something is terribly wrong with this, all of it, and he feels the instincts of a battlefield stir within his consciousness.

“I came to talk to you, Castiel,” Annael declares, but she does not want to disturb her friend or her friend’s second date with a cupid, so she is delicate in her language. “I believe you know what this is about,” she says.

“I do,” Castiel answers. “And I will not discuss it, not right now. Unless you are a currier for my orders, I suggest you leave me.”

Annael leaves the way she came, and her visit feels brief, hollow and pointless.

Dean is staring up at him. Castiel did not realize he got to his feet when he greeted Anna, and he sees now that Dean remained seated. He waits for Dean to come to his level, but he doesn’t, he just sits and stares and possibly drools a little.

“Yes, Dean?”

“Bossy,” Dean whispers, licks his lips, and says nothing more on the matter no matter how many times Castiel pesters him with questions about what he had meant.

The couple in Mexico is a beautiful elderly couple. Their love is pure and it warms Castiel’s heart. He decides it is a good day, smiles at Dean and appreciates the cupid’s job a little more.

Castiel cannot, however, convince Dean to put on some clothes and buy him some tacos.

“It’s Taco Bell. In Mexico,” Dean complains. “You don’t go to Mexico to get tacos. From freakin’ Taco Bell.”

Castiel decides to just steal them, and Dean is not grateful for the food an Angel has put onto his table and so he eats Dean’s taco as well.

“I was going to suggest we go back to your apartment,” he says around it. “I find your room terribly interesting.”

“Hmm,” Dean furrows his brows and doubtless thinks of ways to sneak in another hasty attempt at cleaning, “my brother’s there right now. I think I can get rid of him, though-”

“Never mind, then,” Castiel says, takes Dean’s hand into his own and drags him across the poorly guarded Mexico/US border. Dean’s hand is warm, and Castiel makes sure to travel slowly to prolong the contact. He feels secure with that hand in his own. He looks to Dean and Dean’s green eyes smile at him and envelop him with a tight net of filled silence and belonging. It’s a wonderful sensation.

He leads Dean to the parking lot of the first motel they find in the States.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Dean tells him outright when he understands what Castiel is up to, and Castiel experiences impatience and anxiety. He feels a wave of something akin to self-consciousness wash over him like a chilly lake current on the last day of summer, and he drops Dean’s hand at once, turns and glares his impatience.

Dean takes a step back.

Castiel has scared him; he can see it in a slight twitch in the green eyes as they dart around the parking lot, looking for an escape.

Castiel apologizes and recites depreciation formulas in his head to calm himself. He has crossed a line between passive and pushy, and while he was at it, he’s overstepped the boundary of social acceptance. But he has never been passive or pushy before, not that he can recall, and social acceptance has never been an issue.

Castiel does not understand what he’s doing.

He is confused, he is anxious, he doesn’t know why, but Dean seems to hold all the answers and selfishly withholds them from Castiel.

“It’s fine,” Dean says, still a little on the edge.”You like to be in charge, I get it, I like that ‘bout you.”

That isn’t it. That isn’t it at all.

“But,” Dean continues, “there’s something you should… know.”

Castiel doesn’t want to know that even strangers can tell he’s hung up on Michael. He doesn’t need it, he doesn’t want it, he wants Dean to make him forget about everything except the wonderful things he can do to his body.

He decides to be bossy and pushy, and so he takes charge.

He kisses Dean.

He kisses Dean’s mouth and savors his taste with his tongue. He tries to get at it with his teeth and lips. He needs Dean to fill him with his taste, with this faint aftertaste of whiskey and cupid sugar and everything _Dean;_ Castiel needs it, he wants it because it’s missing in him.

Dean’s reluctance melts away, and Castiel can’t even give him the benefit of saying it melted away slowly. Dean is all teeth and tongue and wetness. Their kiss is messy and Castiel laps at its sweetness and presses himself to the warm and naked cupid body. Dean will need to get creative if he wants to peel them apart anytime soon.

He smooches Dean’s mouth and is very aware they’re making filthy noises, but he doesn’t care – humans can’t hear or see them, and if they could, they would doubtless sing praise to two uniformed servants of the Lord making preparations for their Holy union.

(Dean’s perspective on the matter goes something like this: a naked dude and a sketchy trenchcoat dude are sucking face next to a Lamborghini of a drug lord in front of a cross-border human trafficking cartel, but Dean’s perspective is moot because it’s Castiel’s turn to tell the story, and Castiel is never wrong anyway.)

Castiel can feel Dean’s sharp fingernails rake through the curls of his hair. Dean is undoing the knots and making the hairs on the back of his neck stand. Castiel takes this as encouragement to touch Dean, so he unceremoniously plants a hand on Dean’s left buttock and squeezes. It’s firm and sculpted under Castiel’s touch, and he enjoys its texture and intimacy.

Dean snorts and fists his hair. He isn’t attempting to pull away from Castiel’s firm embrace, and Castiel thinks Dean’s stunt with the cupid hug was as useful as it was slightly traumatic. Dean flexes his gluteus maximus and Castiel a little sheepish.

“Trust me, man,” Dean breaks their kiss to press his wet lips practically onto Castiel’s ear. Castiel shudders and breathes in the scent of Dean’s neck. It’s as intoxicating as the taste of his mouth, “there’re way better ways to work out your issues than th-”

Castiel will not hear it.

He presses the palm of his hand to Dean’s mouth and stares into the green eyes. He hopes Dean is listening to his radio because Castiel is broadcasting ‘ _shut up, Dean’_ on every frequency.

Dean snorts behind Castiel’s hand and rolls his eyes. He rolls them high to the sky where many cupids and angels alike would frown upon their union if only they knew about it. But Castiel takes care that no one knows about it. He has shielded them both from prying eyes the moment they crossed the border, and not even Michael will know about this to persecute either of them for their indiscretions. 

Dean slides his fingers between Castiel’s fingers where his hand is keeping Dean’s mouth firmly shut. He coaxes Castiel to release him and kisses his palm when the grip slackens. He kisses it with his lips and tongue and trails the kisses down his wrist without removing his eyes from Castiel’s, and Castiel wonders just who it is that has the power to pin whom to the ground.

And then Dean practically holds Castiel’s hand and kisses his fingertips. Then licks them. Then sucks them and coats them with sugary cupid spit, and ground shifts from under Castiel’s feet. He has to tip-toe just to keep himself balanced as he manhandles Dean to one of the locked motel doors.

He melts them through it without bothering to open it.

It’s dark inside, the lights are off, the bed is made, and the room in unoccupied.

It’s all he needs, he thinks. Him and Dean, and an endless tumble between the sheets. He can get used to this, Castiel thinks, to Dean’s gentle hands on him, to his hands admiring the smooth curve of Dean’s bare back, to the intimacy and the sweetness and-

And then Dean drops to his knees.

Castiel swallows hard and traces his eyes down the un-ironed hem of his dress shirt and below his belt where a dirty-blonde naked man kneels before him and stares up at him from the most vulnerable angle, and Castiel swallows hard and feels air hit parts of his eyeballs that are never exposed to the elements unless his eyes widen.

Dean grins, leans in and gracefully handles Castiel’s zipper with his teeth.

His _teeth_ , for the sake of everything sane and holy.

Castiel thinks he should tell him to stop. He thinks he should crouch to Dean’s level and kiss him, please him, touch him and assure him there is no need for him to surrender his power, that in bed all are equal, but they aren’t in the bed yet, and Dean succeeds in pulling down his zipper with a curious display of skill, and Castiel is all but lost in watching him.

Dean uses his hands – and Lord bless him for using his hands and not his teeth for this – to pull Castiel’s member out of his briefs. He is careful with his light touches. Castiel can feel the beginnings of an arousal, but just the beginnings, and Dean is gentle with his limpness in the palm of his hand. Castiel appreciates this. He does not like being jerked into hardness and then jerked off; he likes sensation and Dean is all too accommodating with his wet mouth when he takes Castiel’s entire limp length and loves it with his tongue.

Castiel’s knees buck a little and he fists Dean’s hair for support.

He has his own pace and he likes doing things at his own pace. He thinks Dean has his own pace, too, and tries to restrain himself from tugging on Dean’s hair or forcing his member down Dean’s tight throat. He tries.

But Dean is… Dean. He is strong and wonderful and sweet and spontaneous, and now he sits in surrender at Castiel’s feet with a cock down his throat.

Castiel finds this unsettlingly exiting. 

His belly is hot and wound up tight in knots of erection, and he swears not to abuse the power Dean has given him. He will not give into temptation when Dean takes him in all the way to the base, he will not grab at his hair too tightly when Dean tongues his slit, he will not ram or push when the tight circle of Dean’s lips is not enough for him, he will not, he does.

Dean likes it that way. And Castiel wishes he knew what he himself likes, but his mind leaves his body with the first beads of leaking preejaculate. Castiel is gone, dead, away from the keyboard. He jerks at Dean’s hair and pushes himself into the warm cavern like it’s his right to be there, and hears Dean groan when he empties himself down Dean’s throat.

His mind returns when Dean slides his mouth of Castiel’s member with a delicious wed sound and gorgeous string of white abomination, coughs and spits to the side.

Castiel stands there for a moment and watches Dean spit and cough. His face is glossy with white semen and it clings possessively to the pink pucker of his lips. Castiel is stunned, wide-eyed, and ashamed that he loves seeing this.

He drops to his knees and embraces Dean.

He is sorry, he whispers. He only meant to take Dean to bed and have them touch each other until they were both satisfied and happy in each other’s arms.

He didn’t mean for this to happen.

He didn’t mean for it to be this one-sided.

Dean wipes his mouth again, chuckles, and kisses him. Castiel can taste his own sin in Dean’s mouth and finds that he loves it. He kisses the taste away and cleans Dean’s soiled face with his tongue. He picks up every bead of his deed and swallows it and Dean chuckles and traces Castiel’s lips with his soiled fingers until Castiel licks them off as well.

Castiel looks down.

Dean’s member was only half-erect during the ordeal. It isn’t hard to notice an arousal when a cupid is clad in only his uniform.  Castiel could smell it, he could taste it in the air and savor the thought of tasting it when it leaked, but now it is nearly gone and Castiel doubts Dean wants him to reciprocate.

He offers, and Dean refuses.

“T’was for you, anyway,” he insists, takes Castiel by the shoulders and leans them both back against the foot of the unused bed. “Figured I’d help you work out your issues instead of making you Dr. Phil them.”

Castiel feels grateful and tingly in his lower belly.

“You are too kind,” he tells Dean, “much kinder than I would expect.”

Dean maneuvers his sated and clothed body until it’s nested in his lap with Castiel’s on his bare shoulder. The reply Castiel receives is a soft whisper into his hair: “S’nothing. Told you I like you.”

“Yes,” Castiel is glad Dean remembers. He brushes his face against bare skin. His stubble gets caught and Dean makes a noise. _Ticklish_ , Castiel realizes, _Dean is ticklish._ “It’s complicated,” he says aloud, “that your brother must be the one to drive us apart.”

Dean frowns and hugs him closer.

“They reassigned the cupid hit,” Dean tells him, and Castiel realizes that the time frame for the cupid reassignment has passed hours ago. Time passes fast when he has Dean on his mind.

 _Yes,_ he thinks. There is never enough time, not with Dean around. It’s “cute,” he thinks, Balthazar would call his infatuation with a cupid _cute_ , like it’s something pretentious and adorable he could remember but never keep, because _cute_ means _petty_. Dean isn’t petty. Dean is his.

“To whom?” Castiel wonders aloud, but decides it doesn’t matter. There is yet to be an angel capable of catching Castiel off-guard and with his back turned to the source of danger. Castiel must be unconscious for a cupid to land his arrow into his heart.

And, he thinks, even if a cupid with the necessary set of skills were to surface and target Castiel’s mending heart, he has Dean. “Whoever it is,” he tells Dean and cuddles into him, “I trust you enough to warn me.”

Dean remains silent for a long time, so long that Castiel thinks Dean has fallen asleep. His dream must be a dark one, because Castiel can feel a vial of dark and dangerous thoughts drape over Dean’s consciousness. It feels terribly wrong, and Castiel wishes he knew how to clear Dean’s mind of it.

Dean isn’t asleep.

After a while, his grip on Castiel tightens and he presses his lips to his temple.

“I don’t know who got the assignment,” Dean whispers into Castiel’s hair. “They didn’t tell me.”

Castiel assures him that it doesn’t matter because he has Dean to watch over him as he sleeps.

He sleeps.

He sleeps in Dean’s arms with his guard down and his back to Dean.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. It was all very srs for a while until Cas got really confused.
> 
> 2\. The token so would've kept spinning.
> 
> 3\. Thank you shoutous to **aadarshinah** , **Dee** , **Su** , **ButterflyKaguya** and **CasperAinsley** for commenting and encouraging me along!  <3


	3. The One About Temper

 

# The One About Temper

Castiel’s lightly snoring on his shoulder, and Dean chews the inside of his mouth.

He’s plucking at an imaginary “just do it” Nike daisy in his head. The freaking daisy has like a million petals, because Dean just can’t make up his mind no matter how many petals he rips off.

_Do it, dumbass._

_No, don’t._

He has his gun. It sits there in that cross-dimensional space thing where he puts it in-between jobs. All he has to do is reach for it, press the barrel to Castiel’s beating heart, slide his finger down the gentle curve of the trigger, and squeeze it.

There would be no pain, not for Cas at least. He wouldn’t feel a thing, not with his body or his mind. He would feel it with his heart though, because it would stop beating to sustain Castiel’s life and begin to beat for Michael.

And it sounds a lot more grotesque than it actually is.

It’s a fucking love gun, for fuck’s sake.

There’s no need for it to get so Casablanca.

It’s not like it’s gonna kill Cas.

It’ll just make him really happy.

With someone else.

 _Oh no,_ Dean rolls his eyes and imitates his best Sam Winchester, _no, but get this, the horror._

Dean’s a cupid.

It isn’t always that they get to see the results of their arrows in bizarre fast-forwards, but he can see Castiel’s. And in it, Cas is angry at Dean, hurt by Dean, betrayed by Dean, and in love with Michael who will never do any of these terrible things.

If Dean shoots him now, this will be it.

Cas makes noises in his sleep and curls his body into Dean’s, and Dean wonders what the fuck was so difficult about getting them both in bed that’s literally right there.

Nothing, he thinks. Nothing, exactly like the thing that’s keeping him from shooting Cas and going his own merry way. There’s a clock on them, and he knows it’s ticking away precious minutes.

The worst is that Dean is lost to common sense.

The fucking cupid poison is a strong motherfucker.  Sometimes, when he’s on a job, Dean thinks about what the hell kind of weed really goes into making that stuff, because it bonds together the most ridiculous and unlikely people like some cosmic superglue.

He has first-hand experience now, and it’s terrifying and exhilarating.

To his horror, Dean realizes that he’s ready to do whatever it takes to make Cas happy. He’s known him for like what, two days? Yeah. And he’s already ready to throw down his body into a pool of lava just so that Cas could walk on him and across a river of lava to safety.

He’s thinking of lava now.

 Awesome.

Common sense, lost, case and point.

And Dean supposes he’s kind of lucky, because he’s a cupid, and there’s a reset button in case a cupid happens to be a complete dumbass and shoots himself in the face instead of shooting his pretty blue-eyed and curly-haired target. He’s had time to process it, and he figured after he stabs Castiel in the back with a bullet, he’ll go to cupid HQ and fess up about the arrow mess. He’d get reprimanded, sure, but he can’t live like this. It’ll hurt too much. He’ll fess up, and they will cure him.

And then he’ll get fired and go work at Starbucks.

But at least he won’t be in ridiculous love with another man’s future boyfriend.

But it’s all bitter and morbid, and Dean’s not really the bitter and morbid type.

Gently, he slides his body from underneath a sleeping smite-happy tax accountant. Cas makes noises of discontent and tries to grab at Dean, but Dean’s wearing his uniform, so there aren’t any convenient folds of clothes Castiel can cling to, and from the looks of him, never let go ever in his life at any cost ever at all.

When dry fingers find nothing to grip tight, they grab tightly into Dean’s shoulder. And holy shit, seraphs _are_ freaking supersoldiers on steroids. Dean knows his shoulder will bruise, and he now knows the meaning of ‘never let go, ever, any cost ever at all.’ He chuckles, pulls back the covers, maneuvers Castiel under them, and gets in after him.

Castiel makes some more disapproving noises, releases Dean’s shoulder and shoves at him until he’s almost falling off the edge.

 _There, perfect_ , Cas must’ve thought in his sleep, because apparently it’s only acceptable to cuddle when four-fifths of the bed is unoccupied and the cuddling is occurring at the edge of a proverbial cliff. To make the cuddling manly and super dangerous.

Dean laughs quietly and tucks some messy curls under his chin. He thinks he wouldn’t ever tolerate this gooey hugging crap, except he’s in love, apparently, his head is killing him, and Castiel admitted he hadn’t slept in like a week. Dean too is seriously considering just sleeping off his headache. 

And damn it, Cas is still wearing his coat and shoes under the covers. It’s scratchy next to Dean’s bare skin, and he thinks about mojoing his clothes off.

He could, in theory, do it with his weak-ass mojo if Castiel is relaxed enough to let him. Thing is, using anything even remotely offensive near a soldier is usually never a good idea.

But neither is sleeping next to a dirty trench coat. No offense to Cas. He probably cleans it and repairs it, but it’s still worn and tattered, and Dean doubts Castiel disinfects it when he cleans it. Because germs and stuff, right.

Dean snaps his fingers and Castiel’s outer layers disappear. He then flinches and shields his face.

For a good reason.

Cas wakes up briefly, slaps him, grumbles something incoherent, and goes back to sleep.

Dean wonders how the fuck he’s supposed to shoot at his happiness.

* * *

 

“Hey, Sammy, d’you know-” Dean digs through his room, but most of the papers he finds are either girly magazine subscriptions or overdue water bills, “-how many notations I got?”

“Huh?” Sam moos like a great big cow with antlers and plants his naked ass on Dean’s leather couch.

“The hell you doing,” Dean pauses his excavations to call him out on his crime, “not cool, man. Put some clothes on. House rules.”

“Dude,” his brother neighs, “you should’ve seen yourself yesterday-”

Dean waves him off and leafs through a stack of old assignments. There are murky halo stains on most of them, and Dean learns that he has a habit of using important documentation as coffee coasters.

Great.

He finds nothing useful in the stack and shoves it under that one table that has a scented candle on it.

“Sam, why the hell do I have a scented cand- you know what, never mind. D’you know how many notations I got on my record?”

“It’s your record,” Sam says, “how do you not know?”

Dean has no clue, and after fucking with him for half an hour, Sam has mercy on his soul.

“Fourteen,” he tells him.

Dean can’t recall the allowed amount before they shelved bad cupids, but fourteen sounds excessive.

“It is,” Sam tells him. “You were supposed to get two notations removed last month for that warewolf-human gay couple up in Beacon Hills ‘cause everyone really wanted to see them together, but then you got drunk and started throwing yogurt at them.”

“They were _really_ gay,” Dean says in his defense.

“Then I think you missed the whole point of that,” Sam moos. “Dean, listen, why do you suddenly care about your record? Planning on breaking rules? That’s bad. Don’t do it.”

Most of the time, the rule-breaking happens accidentally, like that one time he accidentally refused to shoot Scarlett Johansson because she was too hot for that douchebag, or that other time he marathoned an Italian soap and accidentally shot up a whole medieval country by the Narrow Sea just to see which incestuous relationship would prevail.

This, though, the Castiel thing, it’s serious.

So he says “yes,” and almost shuffles away like a grumpy old man when something beautiful catches his eye and he kneels to pick it up.

It’s a feather.

A soft, dark, dawn-like feather. It’s is so unlike girly cupid feathers that Dean immediately recognizes it for one of Castiel’s because it’s beautiful and it reminds him of Cas. It makes Dean’s heart warm and he wonders how it would feel to sink his fingers into a whole plain of these in Cas’ secondaries when just this one makes him so damn happy.

Sam catches him smiling. He spots the feather between Dean’s fingertips and Dean is prepared to tell a tale of how it got there, except Sam just snorts.

“Oh yeah,” he says and puts on his bitchface. “So I guess you got a pet duck now? Congrats, I, uh, locked it in the pantry this morning, you should probably feed it or something. It’s really annoying.”

Dean throws the feather down the garburator and lets the thing roar for a full minute. He considers doing the same to the duck, but eventually settles for setting it free to pick bits of old food out of the carpet.

Duck, fed.

Close enough.

Now, if only voiding shitty assignments was this easy.

Dean wonders how the fuck he’s supposed to help Cas, and he can’t think of a single damn way. He needs to void it, not by letting it expire and getting passed to someone else – though that itself will probably be grade A unpleasant and Michael will have his ass for it – but like, cancel the hit. Permanently.

He tries to think of a single case where an archangel-sanctioned cupid hit conveniently got canceled.

He can’t think of any.

He looks around for ideas, but from where he’s sitting, Cas’s been pretty much screwed the second he got Dean on his team. Because Dean’s a shitty teammate. Actually, from the looks of it, Dean is such a shitty teammate that he bats for the other team. But to hell with it, Dean can have an existentialist angelic sexuality crisis when he’s not busy trying to rescue a freakishly strong, really badass and super macho damsel in distress.   

And unlike with feeding the duck, he can’t just half-ass his way through it.

He could ask Sam, but then Sam would realize about the arrow fuckup and drag him to get an antidote.

Dean doesn’t want an antidote.

Being in love is too damn nice.

And he knows he’s being a selfish little shit. Castiel’s true love and happiness could be Michael for all he knows. Maybe Castiel secretly likes being bossed around and demoralized. Or maybe Michael treats his lovers differently than his employees.

Maybe – and Dean thinks this is the brightest idea he’s had all year – he should just go and talk to Michael. He could be like, _‘yo, Michael, can you just call the whole true love and destiny thing off so I could date your boyfriend?’_

Boyfriend.

Does Castiel even know Michael?

Dean’s had relationships that lasted a bit longer than his relationship with Castiel, which is longer than two days, so he now has expertise to consider himself an expert. He and Cas are great together. Michael can fuck off; Dean and Cas have a lot more chemistry than Mike and Cas ever could. Because Dean’s adorable, and Michael’s a grade-A dick. Whose dick Dean’s never actually seen, but if Dean were to imagine it, it would be small and not grade-A at all.

“Dude,” Sam interrupts his very eloquent stream of consciousness. “What the hell are you thinking about?”

“About the notations?” Dean tells him.

“No, it looks like you’re thinking about penises. Stop it, your face is really distracting.”

“What the hell,” he barks and blurts out before he can catch himself: “how the hell do you know tha-”

Sam stares at Dean staring at Sam. They back away from each other awkwardly until Sam remembers he has a Thing to do Over There.

Dean shrugs and turns the apartment inside-out again to find the taco wrapper Castiel used to write his phone number. Dean has given in and bought him Taco Bell after Cas made a collective decision to raise hell and wake them both up and demand food.

That’s the think about Cas. Dean finds him slightly disturbing and slightly _disturbed,_ and it’s hotter than a thousand fucking shining suns blazing down on his dick because it got Dean hard just watching Castiel look down on him from his pillar of hightiness and mightiness as Dean chocked on that gorgeous cock and gunk.

Where the fuck is that number.

When Dean finally finds it, he finds it half-way inside his new pet duck.

It quacks and beats Dean up with its stupid wings. It sheds its stupid and ugly feathers everywhere, and Dean thinks of taking up crafts and making some quilts that would need stuffing. It takes him considerable effort to rescue the prized taco wrapper without having to call Balthazar’s magic healing fingers later, and the triumph he feels over having defeated this hellish beast was probably the reason they gave him a cupid job and not a hellish beast slaying job.

Pride, sloth… lust… something about eating too much… the one about temper? And then… two other ones. _Seven deadly sins, there we go,_ Dean thinks. Dean’s all of them. So’s his dick. Duck. He means duck.

Do high-ranking seraphs do booty calls?

It doesn’t really matter, he thinks. He’ll be happy to have Cas lean into his shoulder and close his eyes and listen to Dean butcher more Plant on his guitar. He’d be happy to smell Castiel’s musk on his bed for the rest of the day and take it into his lungs until there was no more of it. And there will be a day when there would be no more of it, when he grows balls and shoots Castiel in the bed they’ll share, and Cas would be dead to him, and he’ll be dead to Cas, and he will forget the feeling but that scent will stay with him.

Well, shit. Now Dean thinks love is painful and terrible, and it should make him pursue a career change even more, except all the pondering and wailing in misery is worth it.

Totally fucking worth it.

Dean grabs his phone and unfolds the wrapper. He’s so high up on his cloud of happiness that the plunge he takes when the cloud melts from under his feet literally detaches his heart from his body.

 _12345,_ the taco wrapper reads.

Dean reads it again to make sure he got this right, and when it’s still 12345 after the fifth time, he rolls it into a ball and tries to feed the filthy thing back, except even the duck doesn’t want it now.

Dates, burgers, tacos, coat, a day in St. Petersburg, all so that Castiel could get his cock sucked by a pretty cupid.

Dean laughs at himself.

It gets better in exactly three hours and something minutes.

Dean’s in Oklahoma.

He’s a busy cupid, he has shit to do.

…so there’s this car in Oklahoma, right.

 She’s black, sleek and sexy. It’s 1970 and some dickbag’s driving her around with windows rolled down and _Whole Lotta Love_ blasting though her perky little speakers. Dean’s been following this particular car from when she was just some axils on the assembly line.

She was created to be perfect, molded out of clay – or sleek and silvery steel, rather, and Dean actually knows every piece of everything that went into making this car the gorgeous baby that she was. Dean could put on some clothes, some clothes he wouldn’t mind soaking in grease, and just spend the days making this beauty come undone.

He’s been watching her wait for her lover in an Oklahoma sales lot for days, and she didn’t have to wait long. Some asshole fell in love with her and took her away with riches he made from selling drugs to hippies, and she was his, and he rode her tirelessly for a full year until that whore ’68 Lowrider came out, and he sold Dean’s baby to his cousin Jim for a bag of weed.

Cousin Jim is a pothead.

He doesn’t oil her. He lets her get rusty.

It’s a shame, and Dean spent a total of two years worth of weekends of his infinite life going back to this time and watching this dickbag work his baby into the ground.

Dean sits in the shotgun, in his uniform if anyone sees him and starts asking questions. He is upset and invisible. 

Cousin Jim is higher than the empire state building and drunker than Dean.

He’s driving the love of Dean’s life across the state border, up to Kansas, and Dean thinks this is a sign from his Father. She’s had enough abuse. When Cousin Jim parks her, Dean will just steal her and drive her to his place and put a tarp over her and hide her for the next fifty years so he could eventually have her to himself.

Fate has other ideas.

There is some bird crossing the interstate, Cousin Jim is going a hundred and ten, he’s too high to not care about the bird and too cool to wear a seatbelt.

He slams the breaks, flies through the windshield and cracks his skull on the concrete.  

The Impala coasts over the bird and Cousin Jim. She comes out of the incident with only a few scratches except her busted windshield.

Dean’s still busy defying kinetic energy with his mojo when Castiel lands on the side of the road and fusses to open Dean’s door and check if he’s okay.

Fucking Castiel.

Fucking again with the fucking Castiel.

Always Castiel.

“Dean’s not okay,” Dean barks at him, grabs Asstiel by the lapels of his coat to steady himself and shoves him away as soon as he used him for his own selfish gravity needs.

 _Take that, asshole,_ he thinks. _How the fuck does that feel?_

The look on the ex-love-of-his-life’s face changes from blank to blanker, because emotional facial expressions are for losers like Dean.

“Why would you call me that?” Castiel says after the silence stretches, and it takes Dean a moment to realize that instead of imagining the conversation in his mind he actually said it.  

 “Take that, asshole,” he said. “How the fuck does that feel?”

“Why would you call me that?” Castiel said.

 It’s really annoying to deal with people who’re blankly sad because you insulted them – him – and he looks upset and his lips are one narrow line and Dean just wants to punch him.

He dusts himself off and waddles backwards.

“Be-be _cause_ ,” he points his finger and shakes it at Asstiel, “you are a horrible, terrible, back-stabbing, trust-betraying, ass, hole. Yeah?”

Castiel takes a moment to consider this because he’s considerate like that.

He comes to a decision, nods and agrees with Dean.

“Yeah,” Castiel parrots. “Come with me, you need to go home, away from dangerous cars now. Come.”

He reaches his trust-betraying hand out to Dean, and Dean doesn’t punch girls, but he’s apparently not above slapping them on the hands.

“Fuck off. What do you want? Fuck off. Asshole.”

Castiel – not Cas, Cas is someone whom Dean wants to court with Led Zap and take to his bed, and Castiel is an asshole – isn’t looking blanker than Octomom in her porno anymore. He’s looking stern and irritated, but understanding, with a halo and wings and all that love thy neighbor crap.

“You need to stop calling me that, Dean,” he says a bit too evenly for someone who gets horny thinking about taxes, “and you need to come with me. You are not being safe right now-”

“I’m a freakin’ angel, too,” Dean reminds him, “not good enough or anything, but still an angel. Can take care of myself. Thanks, though. Ass. Hole.”

Three times’s the charm.  Smite-happy angel is smite-happy. Dean thinks he thinks, but he actually says it out loud with an eye-roll: “Kansas beware. Ash and brimstone will rain upon your asses for Asstiel the Angel of the Lord is here.”

Castiel’s up in his personal space now, that fast little shit. He pushes Dean, eye for an eye kind of thing, but he’s a lot stronger and Dean’s in a domestic with gravity, so he stumbles and nearly falls over.

“What,” Castiel says with ash and brimstone, “have I done to make an alcoholic hurl abuse at me?”

Dean thinks he can try and get away with more crap, but common sense winks at him from that dungeon Dean’s been keeping it in all this time, and he decides to dust himself off and explain without words.

He reaches across time-space, scoops up the crumpled taco wrapper from his floor where the duck refused to eat it and throws it at Castiel’s general direction. It misses Castiel, just like bullets and arrows miss him, and Dean thinks this is the perfect time to shoot at him.

He’s wearing his uniform, so he’s allowed. He fetches his gun from the thin air and takes a magazine-full of potshots at Castiel as trench-coat-and-accounting bends to pick up the taco wrapper.

They all miss, of course they all miss, and Castiel is growing less amused by the second.

Dean stands there, with his gun hot and smoking, and Castiel straightens out the grease-soaked piece of paper with his left hand. His right hand is at his side, stiller than winter air, and Dean’s seen this before, the first time they met, when Castiel used that hand to rip out throats and burn the bodies.

Dean decides to attack first.

He’s seen enough Jackie Chan movies to know this’ll totally work.   

Drunken Fist is a thing.

He pops right up Castiel’s personal space and tries to sock him, but ends up with his bare ass hitting the ground at his mighty highness’s feet.

Castiel brushes him off like a piece of lint, shows him the wrapper and asks though his teeth, “what about this?”

“What about it, really? One, two, three, four, five?!”

“My phone number is one, two, three, four, five.”

“It’s one two three four five, for fuck’s sake!” Dean shouts at him.

“It was available!”

It takes Dean a second, a long second that lasts like, minutes, and then it hits him. In the gut.

So he sits naked with his ass on the ground and feels like the scum of the Earth, Heaven and Hell came together just to birth one Dean Winchester.

And the saddest freakin’ thing is that Cas feels it. Cas feels Dean’s temper drain away through a bottleneck until only morbid regret stays on the sides of the empty bottle. Dean can see it on his face, and if he was blind and deaf and stupid, or even blinder, deafer and stupider than he is already, he could still feel it in Castiel’s tolerant and pacifying grace.

He reaches for it, and Castiel gives him his hand again, and helps him to his feet, and drapes his coat over him, and kisses his temple.

“Are you sorry?” Castiel says, still annoyed and stern and smite-happy, but gentler, and Dean is in love all over again.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Then you are forgiven. I don’t hold grudges.”

“Hah,” Dean says and feels slightly more not good enough, “you’re a better person than I am, then.”

“I don’t think-”

“Shut up.”

“But I really don’t think-”

“You’re cramming my style, okay,” Dean tells him and scratches the back of his head, “so shut up. This needs to be kinda epic and meaningful, ‘cause I’m about to ask you to bed.”

Cas stares at him for a long while, in that sadistic way brides-to-be stare at their grooms on their wedding days in sappy movies and think _, ‘gee, I’m gonna torture everyone’s patience and hold off my ‘yes’ until the appetizers for the reception party are ready’_ (the kind of movies Dean knows absolutely nothing about because he’s never watched them), and Dean’s about to flip his appetizers by the time Cas finally stops contemplating eternity.

Dean awaits his ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and all he’s missing is a tux and a forty grand wedding debt.

“Could you possibly explain what we are going to do in bed?” is Dean’s simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and seriously, if Cas wants to play dirty, Dean’s got the filthiest mouth in the Midwest to lick at that horny secretary thing Cas probably picked up from porn.

“Well,” Dean feels his face stretch in a nasty grin as he takes Cas by his shoulders and leans into him. He puts delicacy into his voice. He has to be delicate, persuasive, but what comes out is filth, pure and uncensored, and he purrs into Castiel’s ear with every intent of carrying through with every last bit of it,  “you’re gonna fuck my mouth first, yeah? I’m gonna be on my knees and your cock will be so far down my throat I won’t be able to tell you to slow the fuck down. You’ll use my mouth as you like, you’ll tug my hair, you’ll shoot your load down my throat and order me to lick up every bit, off the floor if I spit again, and swallow it, and I will.” He nibbles at Castiel’s ear and presses himself into the solid weight of his chest. “And then you’ll tell me to fuck myself with my fingers, and they’ll be so dry and my hole will be so tight for you, and you’ll get hard again, and you’ll fuck me dry until I’m wide and sleek and bleeding for you, Cas, only you, until my fuckhole is loose and filthy with your come. And then you’ll do it again, and again, and you can plug me to keep it all in, until there’s so much of your come up my ass that they’ll smell you on me and know I’m your bitch. That’s what we’re going to do in bed, you and me, Castiel.”

Dean leans away and learns that he somehow managed to get himself horny _. Correct my nominative pronouns after that, Cas_ , he thinks and mentally gives himself an A in sex-ed, because that’s what they teach in sex-ed, right, except when he looks at Cas, it’s the 12345 all over again.

Castiel is terrified.

He stands there, wide-eyed and stiller than a flag on a non-windy day. There’s a distinct expression of someone severely shell-shocked on that pretty face of his, and Dean wonders if he maybe took it a bit too far.

“Cas?”

Cas apparently remembers he’s standing in a middle of a car accident with a dead bird, a dead guy and a nice car some twenty feet away from him. He blinks, swallows, looks Dean straight in the eye and says, “I think I’m going to walk away now. In a respectful way. Please don’t take offense.”

“Woah, easy there,” Dean blurts and grabs Cas by the shoulders again when he’s about to _actually_ leave, for fuck’s sake. Dean’s seen this behavior before, in Russia, when he asked Cas about his job and Cas flipped his pancakes and almost stormed off without saying a word, and he actually would’ve left if Dean didn’t ground him the fuck down. “Never mind all that. We can go grab some food and take the accounting exam. Calm down, it’s okay.”

Castiel shakes his head. He doesn’t look terrified anymore, just slightly disturbed, and Dean’s mentally kicking himself in the face, but seriously, what the hell, it’s not like Cas didn’t ask him to talk dirty to him, right?

Right?

“Dean, I understand you are… not in a coherent state of mind, but…” he bites his lips and tries to think of anything to say. Dean can see he’s struggling. There’s an air of defeat around it when he says, “why would you think I would do that to you?”

Dean blinks.

Too far, then. Way too far.

“Because it’ll be fun?” he tries.

“No, Dean. That sounds horrible, for both of us, I would never-“

“Cas, you been laid recently?”

Dean stares and watches Castiel take a full minute to remember the last time he’s been laid.

“If you’re asking me if I had sex, yes, Dean, of course.”

Dean’s starting to get an impression that there’s this fundamental disconnect of understanding between the two of them, but he can’t quite pin it down.

Dean should’ve just started the whole thing with ‘so, two gay cockblockers walk into a bar,’ and it would’ve won him a peace prize.

“Look,” he gives up, and there they stand, waving white flags at each other, or maybe that’s just Dean’s underwear, “you wanna fuck or not?”

“I do _not_ want to do what you just said we will do,” Cas says. He sounds fierce in his cockblocking.

“Fine, not that. Vanilla. We can do the most vanilla vanilla ever, okay?”

This is going a lot worse than Dean even thought was possible. 

He thought Cas would either jump his ass and ride it, or tell him to fuck off, or give some bullshit excuse like _‘no, Dean you don’t understand, I’m actually secretly straight.’_

“I don’t understand what vanilla has to do with this,” Cas says, and Dean regrets the interstate has no walls he could use to bash his head in.  

“Cas. Let’s go to bed and have sex. Do you want to do that?”

Castiel reluctantly asks, “now?”

“Well, yeah,” Dean tells him.

“Ask me later.”

“Do you ever just say _yes_ or _no_?”

Castiel presses his lips together and just sort of loses interest in a really fucking _available_ and practically _naked_ dude who’s spent the last ten minutes flashing his half-hard dick at him. Seriously, Dean had no idea he was that undesirable.

Castiel passes the dead man on the side of the road. He minds the spilled brains when he steps over the man and makes his way to a crushed bird. It’s a duck of all things.

Another fucking duck.

Dean’s gut sinks and he feels dread. The last time this happened, he ended up with another really loud and annoying beak to feed, and no, he doesn’t mean that face Sam makes when he takes Selfies with his iPhone in the bathroom, and who the fuck brings Starbucks to the bathroom?

The duck’s dead on the side of the road, and Cas inspects it with smitey scrutiny. When he bends over it, Dean thinks it’s either to burn its dead body out of existence altogether or lovingly bring it back to life, and he can’t tell because he apparently doesn’t understand Cas at all.

It’s the second one. The duck quacks a hallelujah and proceeds to peck at Cousin Jim's brain matter. There are ambulance sirens in the far distance.

“What happened here?” Cas asks in his best Batman voice.

Dean’s pretty smashed and the Impala story feels a bit intimate, but he tells it to Cas anyway ‘cause Cas asked. 

“Have you ever skipped ahead to just see what happens to her?” Cas minds his pronouns, which Dean really appreciates.

No, Dean tells him, he never skipped ahead. “Where’s the fun in knowing how it ends? It’s how we get there that counts, yeah?”

Dean realizes he’s said something extremely profound a bit late, but that’s alright because Castiel catches it first and appreciates it.

“Let’s stay and see what happens next,” Cas says, and Dean beams brighter than Impala’s headlights in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a sexy sunset, because Cas cares. So they stay. Ambulances arrive, police arrives, they clean the mess and spook Dean’s newest addition to his collection of duck-faced siblings.  

Dean’s baby gets put on a backburner, and Dean takes Castiel’s hand into his own, kisses it, and leads him to the sleek black hood and sits him to one side. He climbs next to him and they watch the disorganized chaos that is two public service departments in the 70s coming together and failing to accomplish much of anything at all.

They get bored, turn away, and watch the sun fade under the jagged mountainous line of horizon. Light goes out for their side of their Father’s creation, but things in the night are just as beautiful as they are when they bathe in sunlight, but it isn’t with eyes that they should be watched and admired.

Dean’s brain is swallowing up every bit of the cool stuff Cas tells him about the pretty sun.

The things he says are poetic and somehow fundamentally _Castiel_ , and all that stands between Dean and swooning is his manly dignity. There he is, the idiot who thought serenading “Stairway to Heaven” across the official angel radio the other day was really romantic, but things Cas says are on a whole different level of chivalry and courtship.

“Romance in middle ages must have been interesting,” Castiel tells him, and Dean snorts.

“Wouldn’t know. They made me sit out the plague thing and the crusades thing.”

“Why?”is Cas’s honest-to-God curiosity. Dean asks _why why_ , and Cas tells him he pretty much spearheaded both initiatives because people were perverting God’s word into bigotry, and no one liked it.

“Ouch,” Dean says. “And I dunno why. I got a great big notation for temper on my file, that probably got a lot to do with it.”

Castiel nods agreeably, and Dean’s starting to get a lurking suspicion Castiel reciprocated the whole file-stealing with file-stealing.

“Did you steal my file?” Dean props himself on his elbow and accuses, and Castiel intently avoids looking at him.

 _Subtle,_ Dean thinks when he asks again and Castiel tries to derail his train of questioning by pointedly patting his thigh. Over Castiel’s’ trench coat Dean’s still sporting, of course, lest he forget he’s practically naked,  but then he makes the fortunate mistake of staring some more. Cas forgets all about spying out the first evening star, turns to Dean, and suddenly their noses are touching.

Dean thinks this is where he should kiss him, because everything was going the Romantic Comedy route and not Girls Gone Wild route, but Castiel apparently doesn’t know anything about logical scripts and continuity.

Dean leans in for a kiss, but Castiel slips his gentle hand under the coat, and suddenly it’s not so gentle anymore. He squeezes Dean’s thigh where it’s still kind of firm and muscly and traces up to where it’s soft.

And tender.

And a bit ticklish unless Cas presses his palm into it firmly.

And then it’s just fingertips tracing up and over the curve of loose skin, and shit, gently over the side of his balls, and then down his shaft.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

Cas is still lying on his side with his nose to Dean’s nose, staring into his eyes with the force of something severe and unstoppable, and Dean has to remind himself it’s okay and this is how Cas normally looks at things, and this kind of intense glaring is perfectly safe for his dick. Which Cas is currently fondling.

What do you even say to that.

Cas traces his careful fingers down the underside and Dean jerks when they don’t stop where it’s socially acceptable but instead very gently trace around his sack and cup it before going back to his cock and giving it a few lazy strokes.

“Well, then,” Dean whispers and licks his lips when blood rushes downstairs and Castiel’s fingers rub right at his slit. “You wanna make me come, baby?”

There is this faint hesitation Dean would’ve never caught if Cas wasn’t right in his face. It’s quick, but Dean catches it: blue eyes dart to the car they’re lying on and back to Dean.

Dean laughs a throaty laugh, but it becomes a hiss when his dick gets a few rough jerks.

“N-not the Impala, you dork. You’re my baby, Cas. You.”

He presses his forehead into short black curls and whines when Cas liberates his cock from the soft curve of his palm and allows it to stand.  

“Not on my coat.”

Dean snorts.

“Not on my car!”

Cas slides a leg between his thighs and climbs on top of him. “On your _car,”_ he hisses like he’s giving an order to an army of savages, takes Dean by the lapels of the trench coat and jerks at it hard, “ _not_ in my _coat_.”

He peels Dean out of his coat, and Dean’s pretty glossy-eyed and a little terrified, and also he’s drunk so not everything is tuned right. Those are his excuses, and he’s sticking with ‘em. He loses half of his boner when Cas stops fondling hit while he undresses him and manhandles him so that his ass is nearly hanging off the hood.

He tries to vocalize his excuses, but Cas clamps his hand over his mouth and shushes him.

The coat gets neatly folded and put away, and Dean lies there, on a hood of a would-be-his car, staring at the stars, naked and unpleasantly half-aroused, thinking about just what the _fuck_ he was thinking with that dumbass brain of his.

Cas comes back to him just at that perfect moment Dean thinks he’s ready to bolt, except Cas grabs him under his knees, gets his heels off the ground and onto the hood and gracefully sits between Dean’s spread legs.

“Shouldn’t you kiss me first or something?” Dean grumbles and Cas takes his cock into one hand and admires the weight of it. He doesn’t comment that Dean lost some of his hardness, he just kisses his cock and whispers against it, “I really did not like what you said about penetrative sex.”

“You think?”

“I think,” Cas completely misses the whole point of rhetorical questions and just sort of jerks at his cock in lazy half-assed attempts to get him up again. He isn’t trying though, not really. He just sits there, with his scratchy cheek pressed into that sensitive bit in his thigh, talking to Dean’s dick and teasing it with air movement. “I think women are your type, Dean. Girls, Dean. Girls are your type. I am not your type,” he teases his slit with his thumb until Dean’s hard enough so he can dig at it. “I am not your type, Dean, and I am out of your league.”

Dean hisses because that was really fucking rude, but also because Cas makes this really tight circle with his fingers and squeezes Dean’s entire length through it, tip to stem, and it’s really fucking slow and tight and he’s hard all over again. Well, that didn’t take much.

“Asshole,” he says to Cas anyway, and Castiel, bless his really clean accounting mouth, says:

“Later. You first.”

Dean knows exactly what both of those statements mean. He wants to ask just to make sure though, he wants Cas to say something filthy with that pure mouth of his, but Cas makes wet noises and pulls Dean’s ass cheeks apart with his thumbs. It’s wet and a bit cold when Cas dips a spit-soaked fingertip into his hole. It leaves moisture behind when it retreats, and he’s a bit wet there now, and Cas, that sick and amazing bastard, whispers at his nether bits so that cold air hits him there and his muscles pucker involuntarily.

“And, Dean,” he whispers and nudges a thumb right at the center of Dean’s closed asshole and rolls in very unsettling circles, “I assume you have a vast experience with women, but you’ve only had a few casual encounters with men. Were they rough with you?” he applies pressure into his thumb until Dean’s hole opens just enough to welcome the tip of it, “were you rough with them?” He works his finger in just half an inch in and Dean expects him to keep digging, except he pulls it out swiftly and Dean jerks. “Did they tell those things to you?”

“Yesss,” he hears his vocal cords betray him, _yes to everything._

“Well, I assume it was fun,” Cas says and teases his hole again. “All five minutes of it.”

 He fucks him with just a fingertip, not even half an inch in, not even close to going through the thick barrier of muscle and penetrating into the open cavity. He’s playing with Dean’s ass, and it’s agony for his cock. He reaches for it, but Castiel catches his hand and pushes that playful finger right up his ass, hooks, pulls, and Dean whines in discomfort.  “Don’t,” Cas hisses, “don’t touch yourself.”

“T-then get on it,” Dean whines.

Castiel’s fingers are gentle again. He fucks him with one, sleeks Dean’s tight walls with spit, and tries to make room for one more. But it’s dry already, and Dean’s hole clings to it with vigilance. _Just push harder,_ Dean thinks, because Cas isn’t really pushing, just massaging and rolling lazy muscles whichever way they let him. And then Cas leans low and sucks his dry digits wet while one is still inside him. He catches Dean’s hole with his mouth, and Dean thinks he’s blushing.

“I wonder if I can finish you without touching you,” Cas muses and Dean snorts at him with half the mind to make another attempt to fist himself and jerk off.

“Hell no you can’t,” he just says. He feels the stretch. It’s burning inside his hole and he kind of likes it because the friction is making him really fucking hot inside. Cas hasn’t even put his dick in. And Dean’s seen that dick. He tasted it, felt the weight of it in his mouth. Castiel has this gorgeous, thick cock, nice and full and _thick,_ and it would ravage his fuckhole so open and filthy and wide Dean shudders and suppresses a moan when Cas finds his sweet spot and fucking _milks_ it.

 He can’t speak.

There’s this ball of spit and pleasure down his throat, and Dean can’t speak, can’t really even breathe. He squints through sweat and sees Castiel still resting his head against his thigh, pounding his prostate with his fingers. He’s so close to Dean’s hard and fucking leaking cock it won’t take him much to just touch it, or suck it, or do anything to it except let it stand there and leak and get fucking purple.

Dean thinks, _fuck this,_ reaches for himself again, except suffocating and enormous angel mojo pins his wrists above his head near the sharp edges of Impala’s broken windshield, and he can’t move his hands.

Dean can’t fucking move his hands.

He bucks and seriously considers just thrashing because what the _fuck_ , this shit suddenly got _scary_ , except Cas pulls out of him and climbs to his eyelevel and leans in and whispers, “let me, Dean.” He kisses his cheek, and Dean tries to buck his hips and grind, but Cas is way too strong and he can’t. “Please let me. Let me show you what I can do for you. I really like you. You can do this. Let me-”

“Are you c-crazy,” Dean swallows, “I’ll pass o-out-”

“I will relieve you if you can’t do it, trust me Dean. But you can. I know you can,” Cas pins his thighs down and reaches into him again. He knows the angle now, and Dean’s hole is loose for him, so Dean sucks in his stupid fingers in like they belong there.

He screams when Castiel presses into his prostate so hard that Dean sees all stars fall from the sky.

“Fuck,” he cries.

He can feel beads of come leak down his shaft and onto his belly.

 _This is how I die_ , he thinks, fucked open with his cock purple and shiny and smacking against his stomach as he bucks into an asshole massage.

“Shh,” Cas shushes him and when Dean feels his eyes are leaking, he asks, “still want me to kiss you?”

Dean whines something incoherent, something that must’ve sounded like ‘no’ because Castiel doesn’t kiss him on the mouth. He pecks at his chest, his belly, drops back between his legs and puts that innocent mouth of his right over Dean’s open fuckhole.

His chapped lips irritate the tender pucker and Dean spasms, screams and wiggles. He wants to come so badly he’s crying with his mouth and his eyes. He’s twitching everywhere, tries to get purchase on the Impala’s shiny grill, but Cas keeps his legs apart and sucks at his hole and teases its loose edges. Dean can’t resist him. He tries to pucker up and make a point that he’s dying, but Cas worked him so fucking open that that hot tongue just slides in and fucks him.

Cas hooks Dean’s ankle over his shoulder, and Dean tries to get at it with his leg, but fuck, he only did that so he could tongue and fingerfuck him at the same time. He slides the fingers in and stretches Dean around his tongue to he can probe the folds there.

Dean feels like ass is this hot and soft thing meant for Castiel’s personal satisfaction, like his hole needs constant fucking and stretching and kissing, and the world around him goes black and he dies inside.

Castiel withdraws completely and whispers to him through the darkness, “come for me, Dean,” he says, “you can do it. For me. Please,” but Dean can’t, he can’t, he’s dead, and Cas asks, “what do you need, tell me what you need to make this happen, I will give it to you…”

Dean needs his hand free, and Castiel releases it, takes it by the wrist and Dean thinks something snaps because he’s trying really hard to reach for his cock. Cas guides him and _shows_ him. He shows him why Dean is the most beautiful thing in the world at this fucking moment.

Dean’s fingers just sink inside. His hole is so loose and sleek with spit that it’s velvety and rich. Dean feels his fingers fill him out, get swallowed and kissed back by soft and fucked-out flesh. He screams in frustration because, he thinks, if he can’t fill his cock with come to shoot it out, at least he can stretch out his hole raw and come from the pain of it… Cas joins his fingers, and it’s perfect. It burns just enough, and it’s Cas, and Cas lovingly leads him to where his prostate is.

Dean bites his bleeding lip, sheaths himself to the knuckles and presses until he can’t see or hear or feel, and when he comes back, there’s white gunk all over his stomach and legs and chest, and Castiel holds him lose and tells him how proud he is Dean was able to do it.

A long while passes.

Paramedics around them still can’t see them, but a stray police officer wonders why the hood of the Impala is all fogged up.

When sensation returns to Dean, he realizes that Cas is still lazily fucking him with his fingers, and he’s still completely dressed, and Dean doesn’t think anything of it because his brain decided to fuck off on a vacation to Alaska a long time ago.

“Well,” he says when it’s time to get the fuck out of there because a tow truck finally arrives to get his baby to a lot. “Okay, then.”

Castiel slips out of him for the final time and wraps a hand around his waist, “I will not make a habit of this, I swear. I just thought I could give you something new.”

Dean’s still too brain-dead to tell Cas to cancel his morning plans because he’s taking him to Vegas and marrying him.

“I don’t do this often,” he murmurs a confession, and Dean combs his fingers through dark hair, “I just wanted to show you that I can be very good if you ever want me to do something like this to you.” He rests his head on Dean’s chest and adds, “also, I hope you’ve had adequate experience with women who are into experimentation, because I like to take it. I’m usually much lazier than this.”

Dean thinks Cas exhausted his entire vocabulary on that one sentence. But then he gets it, and says, “this goes both ways?” and gives himself an A+ because no way in hell Michael would let Cas do this kind of thing to him. 

“If you like. I would prefer it went the other way, however.”

“Cas,” Dean tells him and props himself up on an elbow seriously. His wrists are sore, and every part of his body is either twitchy or mushy, “I seriously don’t think I can top that.”

Cas envelops him with his grace, and it’s warmer than a toaster cozy. He says, “do you really feel you need to outdo my sexual performance to have a relationship with me, Dean?”

Castiel’s voice is so hoarse it sounds like he’s gargling marbles. His marbles aren’t wrong. Dean’s always had these girlfriends he needed to protect or keep real happy in the sack. Castiel is strong and can take care of himself. So Dean says, “no” because it’s what Cas wants him to say. He’s not sure he can live with it, though.

There are also two good reasons a grown angel would be gargling marbles.

 One, of course, is that this angel happens to be Castiel whose voice just sounds really freakin’ intense.

The other reason is that Castiel might be horny.

Dean looks down the curve of his dress pants, and yup, he is.

Dean raises an eyebrow, but Castiel shoots him down. They don’t have the time, he says.

The tow people have yet to argue with the ambulance people and the police people, Dean reasons, and Castiel gives him another excuse: “I don’t like to have orgasms alone,” he says like he’s explaining Dean his tax return.

“I’ll join you,” Dean winks, and Cas gets this look on his face. It’s kind of like Sam’s bitch face if Sam’s bitch face was blank and constipated. “I can!” Dean pushes.

“I don’t like to have orgasms alone,” Castiel repeats.

“Oh yeah, what the hell about how we got into this bullshit situation in the first place, how about that, you hypocrite?”

“As a hypocrite,” Castiel tells him clinically, “I don’t like to have orgasms alone.”

An old man with an ill-maintained beard, in a plaid shirt and a baseball cap finally gets cleared to get the Impala on her merry way to a police lot and then hopefully a more caring owner. He approaches Dean and Cas with a tow hook, and Dean rolls off the hood lazily. He’s really fucking sore and filthy. Castiel makes a point to tell him this.

“I need a shower,” Dean complains, because it’s really super creepy to go around lookin’ like a fucked out whore with come all over his thighs and tiny scratches and handprints all over his legs when it’s a job requirement to look naked _and_ professional at the same time.

Like, what the fuck, in the first place.

“I’m gonna go home and take a shower or something,” he tells Cas. There’s a spring in his step and he’s kind of happy when he adds, “you can wait for me in my room or join me.”

“No,” Cas says and gestures west. He collects his coat from the ground but doesn’t try to cover Dean up with it. Out of love for the coat, Dean thinks at first, but then he notices a glare of appreciation land on the filth on his belly.

Cas looks a little smug, Dean notices, and realizes Castiel is smug because he’s proud of what he’s done to him.

He likes how he undid him at the seams and put him back together. 

He likes it.

He wants to look at this work. If he was an asshole, he’d probably show off white stains on Dean’s skin and soreness in his ass to random strangers, but Castiel isn’t an asshole, so he just settles on very conspicuously walking behind Dean and burning intensely sexual glares into his backside.

Dean laughs.

“Where we goin’?” he chuckles at Castiel’s lack of subtlety. He stretches lazily and waddles without a particular direction, just away from the crash.

It’s really dark in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a sexy night.

“El Dorado lake,” Castiel answers. “Convince me you can walk and won’t drown, and I will fly us there.”

“You want me to take a bath in the creepiest lake in the state?” Dean complains.

“No,” Cas tells him, “we are going skinny dipping.”

Dean shuts his trap pretty quickly after that.  

But he’s right. El Dorado is as creepy as Dean knew it would be. There’s an outline of a random tree growing right out of the black water, and there’re some water lilies without the lily parts, and that tall weed stuff that grows in lakes.

He kind of doesn’t want to go in there. Cas could’ve been a gentleman and taken them to the beachy part of the lake, but he suspects Cas is into spooky creepy things, so he gives him this one. It’s hard not to give it to him when Cas begins to strip.

Right there, on the shoreline, with chunky sand and grass between his feet, and Dean just watches him step out of his shiny shoes and roll his socks into tubes. Castiel’s outline is solid and graceful against the blank blackness. There is nothing around them but dirt and water, and Dean swallows and helps Cas out of his dress jacket.

He doesn’t know what to do with it, so Cas takes it back, folds it, and places it on top of his folded coat.

Cas’ stuff all somehow ends up in these symmetrically-positioned OCD squares, and Dean secretly laughs at him, but he can’t really say he wouldn’t put it past him.

All stars are up in the sky, and their light kisses the curve of Castiel’s back where his wings were if Dean’s been allowed to see them.

Dean’s cheeks flush because Castiel’s still a bit hard, but he gets the point of the lake and the no-fucking thing when his toes breach the surface of the still and black water. It’s freakin’ freezing.

Castiel ignores his cowardice and walks ahead of him until the black waters swallow his knees, then waistline, then shoulders. Dean can barely make out the outline of Castiel’s messy head in the darkness, so he threads water after Cas, except Cas is really graceful and quiet and Dean is like a freakin’ hippo trying to do water ballet.

They make it so far into the water that Dean can’t see shit-all anymore, not the shore not Cas, and so he adjusts his eyes and looks for Castiel’s bright grace and swims towards it.

Dean gets tired after a while, maybe bored of the peaceful silence, and he can’t exactly drown, but passing out fifty feet underwater doesn’t sound exciting. Cas picks up on it. Dean watches his outline glow with his grace, soft and potent, and he lifts himself over the edge of the water and climbs above the soft ripples as if they were solid.

He walks to Dean and helps him out, and soon they’re walking on water, hand in hand.  

“Sirens,” Dean hisses when he realizes what’s under them, and spooks the sirens. The miniature naked women bolt like oversized herring from _Finding Nemo._

Castiel glares at him, and Dean hisses a sorry and gets shushed.

They sit on the soft ripples of the black water and wait for one of the girls to get darin’.

A gray-scaled one with black hair is the first. She dives out of water a few times a distance away from Dean. She goes in and out in a ridiculous bobbing motion, all squinty eyed and suspicious, until she realizes what these two douchebags are doing sitting on her house.

She dives one final time and surfaces right at Dean’s folded feet.

She flips him off.

“Well, good fuckin’ night to you too,” Dean barks at the bitch.

“Hello,” Castiel tells her.

Thing about sirens is that they sing.

This part humans got right.

Sirens sing. It’s true.

Nobody said anything about them being any good at it, though.

“Whaat doo youu waant?” the spunky siren sings completely off-key.

Dean thinks it’s really sweet that Cas brought him here, but he can’t really tell a siren they’re here ‘cause there’s a song about her and Castiel’s boyfriend likes it.

Cas either makes shit up or has legit reasons to be there, because he says, “there was a hunter here a few weeks ago. Your school drowned him.”

“Yees,” the siren wails and turns her attention to the attractive naked man, “aand hee waas deliiicious.”

“Was it you who killed him?” Cas asks without any judgment in his voice.

“Noo, iit waas myy brotheer-iin-laaw Steeeeeeve.”

Dean blinks at that and says, “there are dude sirens?”

The lady-siren turns her head like a full 180 degrees and stares at Dean.

“Yees, dumbaaass.”

“May I speak to your brother-in-law, then?” Castiel asks politely, and the siren disappears below the water.

Dean leans into Castiel’s neck until his wet hair drips on his face. “Real reason?” he whispers.

“Real enough,” Cas whispers back.

Brother-in-law Steve looks exactly as feminine as the first siren.

“If one more hunter dies, and I will smite this whole lake. Is that understood?”

Brother-in-law Steve understands.

Cas nods.

“And,” Castiel nods at the first siren with gray skin and black hair, “thank you for your help—” he leaves a blank space for her to fill in her name.

“Matttt,” s/he tells him, flips Dean off again, and swims away.

Dean stares at the ripples the siren caused in his life and Castiel leans into his shoulder and tells him they better leave.

Dean smirks and can’t really help himself. He gets to his feet, takes Castiel’s hand and sings all the way back. “ _Long_ afloat on shipless… lakes,” he modifies the song a bit, and Cas chuckles softly, “ _I did all my best to smile 'til your singing eyes and fingers drew me loving to your isle._ ”

“You have a nice smile,” Cas tells him. “You don’t smile enough.”

The water tickles the soles of their bare feet but stays firm under them until it becomes sand and debris and happy memories.

 _“Sail to me, sail to me,”_ Dean whispers and happens to think he’s being incredibly romantic. Cas doesn’t drop his hand, just watches him with a fierce intensity, but his grace feels gentle and calm and Dean wants to hold it in his hand.

 Cas slides his free palm down the curve of Dean’s arm and tangles their fingers.  They’re naked and wet, but it doesn’t matter. Cas is gorgeous with his clothes or without them. The starlight gives contour to his soft curves and pointed edges, it kisses him where Dean wants to kiss him.

They hold hands and eyes and stand naked with debris digging into the soles of their bare feet and murky darkness around them for miles.

Cas looks sideways and takes that one step forward. He’s embarrassed and sweet, Dean thinks, as embarrassed and sweet as someone strong and amazing could be, but for a moment, just a careful and brief moment of testing the waters and seeing if touching each other like this is okay.

It’s okay.

Cas pulls Dean’s hands and drapes them loosely around his waist, leaves them there and Dean envelops him with his cupid security. He pulls, and they are pressed together, chest to chest, nose to nose, and they know no sex will come of it. Just kissing, and Cas tiptoes and kisses his mouth, and just touching, and Dean roams his hands over curves and scars and memories, and love.

Dean keeps Cas firmly nested into his chest and drops them to the grassy sand. Tiny sharp lake pebbles bite into his back, but he forgets they’re there when Cas straddles him. His thighs are strong and the two of them fit well together. Cas touches his shoulders and traces the contours of his muscles, brushes over his nipples and never once stops kissing them.

 _“Here I am,”_ Cas whispers because Cas is not one for singing, “ _here I am.”_

They roll around in the darkness without seeing much, just feeling with fingertips and hearts, until they fall asleep in each other’s arms, until the first Morning Star rises in the East, sees them, and runs to tattle on them to Michael. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All feedback about the story so far is very much appreciated! <3
> 
> Thanks and ass-grabs of gratitude go to **asmodesgold** , **Axephiel** and **krizzle**.


	4. Devil In The Details

# Devil In The Details (1)

Castiel awakens when moon releases the lake water and a weak tide licks his toes.

The first sensation he feels upon his awakening is a sharp stab in the back.

It’s Dean, Castiel thinks. Dean slipped a blade into his back just now. But there is no knife piercing flesh, not really, so he changes his mind and thinks it’s his own guilt eating its way into his mind.

All it is is rock lodged into his spine, not a blade, and definitely not one of Dean’s doing. How underwhelming. 

That's good that Dean didn't randomly betray him in his sleep, Castiel supposes. Gives him an excuse to kiss Dean a good morning. He looks around. He sees sand and endless water and grass and his own clothes.

He sees no Dean.

Castiel is naked and alone on a dirty beach. He is sore and healthily flustered because it’s morning, he has bruises and scratches from sharp things that served as his bed, and Dean just left him here like this.

He sighs. He is sour, but he is not stupid.

Something came up and Dean left. It happens. Castiel is never one to overreact.

He is, however, very much one to act out. He wonders if the general reaction will be of humor or horror if he flies home in the nude. Because he can, because it will start rumors, because it will make Michael jealous.

Why not, he decides, it isn’t a particularly life-and-death sort of problem. Castiel grips his folded clothes tightly, and flies. He flies at a casual speed because he’s feeling lazy, and modesty was never one of his talents.

He passes Samandriel and Samandriel comes close to having a stroke. Castiel says hello to him and keeps flying gracefully.

He lands in his apartment.

His television is missing, so he knows Balthazar will not be returning for a while.  

He puts his whites into the washing machine and struggles with the buttons, because if a picture of cup with spaghetti on a washer is meant to be helpful, God’s (arguably) masterpiece that is humankind is too smart and metaphorical for Castiel’s feeble mind.

“Castie-el,” a honey voice sings from a loveseat by the refrigerator, and the Devil is in the details because Castiel doesn’t  _have_  a loveseat by the refrigerator. 

 “Satan, please get out of my kitchen.”

Lucifer complies. His leopard-print loveseat vanishes from Castiel’s kitchen and reappears at Castiel’s feet. Its passenger is reclined in it; he holds liquor in a short glass and his eyes impolitely linger on Castiel’s naked and sandy body.

Castiel raises a brow at that, and Lucifer smiles at him unkindly and says, “I can see why Michael likes you.”

“I like to think Michael had other reasons for liking me.”

“And do you like him?”

“I’ve spent an eternity with him, I like to think that I had my reasons.”

“Did you really?” Lucifer clicks his tongue, and Castiel wonders which side of the comma spice he is questioning.

“What do you mean by that, Lucifer?”

Lucifer chortles unpleasantly and locks his arms behind his head. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out, cause I don’t like that I don’t get it. Or maybe I won’t. I’m just here for the  _you go talk to your friends, talk to my friends, talk to me_  thing. But you two are never…”

He pauses, and Castiel stares at him.

“You’re supposed to go,” Lucifer drones, “ _ever-ever-ever-ever getting back together._  Come on, Taylor.”

“My name is Castiel,” Castiel explains to Lucifer and wonders if his ex-boyfriend’s brother perhaps invaded the wrong apartment.

“Right,” Lucifer tells him, “go clean up, I’ll wait here and then we can talk about how Michael won’t stop whining about you. Don’t worry about me, it doesn’t look like you have much to steal.”

Castiel nods.

He adjusts to the home invasion and lets it be, gathers a fresh set of clothes and heads for the shower. He can feel Satan staring at his backside. It reminds him of something.

He does not know what. It lingers in his mind, but he forgets it and dismisses the feeling.

“You may disturb my shower,” he tells Lucifer, “only to pass me your phone if Balthazar calls you and tries to sell you a black Sony television set.”

“It’s ‘cause you steal your toys,” Lucifer shouts after him. “Everyone else gets a trill from working human jobs for their money.”

“You also steal things, but nobody steals from you.”

“I’m  _the Devil_.”

“You are a burglar. Put my DVD player back.”

Castiel steps into the shower and watches gray grains and small rocks litter the porcelain. Water runs down the curve of his body in a gentle caress of something just barely not hot enough to burn him. He likes it. He washes his face, shampoos his hair and lathers his body. Every touch reminds him of Dean’s hands and mouth.

It would be nice right now, this moment,, Castiel thinks, to release his troubles with Dean, to feel the rough texture of his hands on him, feel their love on his body, return their love kindly with his own lingering touches and little kisses.

Castiel jerks his hand away from where it was instinctively reaching for his lower belly and perhaps even lower. He bites a knuckle.

Thinking dirty things made him somewhat aroused.

He wonders what Dean would do.

He  _knows_  what Dean would do. To him. For him.

He gently trails his fingers down his silky length. His body responds. He wraps his fingers around himself and thinks of Dean. But it was never meant to be.

_Speak of the Devil._

“Castie-el!” Lucifer drums on the door of the bathroom, and Castiel squeezes too tightly in surprise, and it’s unpleasant.

He groans in frustration.

“Is it Balthazar?”

“No,” Lucifer shouts through the door, “it’s Michael, and he’s trying to sell how sorry he is for whatever he’s done-”

“Why, Lucifer,  _no_. Don’t do this, please. Tell him I’m not here,” Castiel complains and turns off the water.

“He says he’s not here,” Lucifer tells his phone.

“ _What is he even doing_ ,” he can hear Michael grumble on the other end, because Castiel is a celestial being and he can hear both ends of this ridiculous conversation.

“I think he was about to do a little hanky panky with his hand, actually,” Lucifer says and Castiel dabs his face with a towel and leaves it pressed against his eyes for a moment it takes him to count to ten. Castiel can count really fast.

“ _No, he doesn’t do that_.  _Hey, hey Luci,_   _did you tell him I was sorry?_ ”

“I did, though you didn’t tell me what you’re sorry for, so…” Lucifer says.

 _“I don’t even know what I did! Can’t you make something up, you’re Satan for God’s sake!_ ” Michael says.

“Get away from my bathroom, Satan,” Castiel says.

“’Kay,” says Lucifer, “and Michael says he’s real sorry he had sex with farm animals.”

It isn’t funny.

Not even in Enochian.

When Castiel emerges from the shower, he finds Lucifer with his slippered feet up on his obnoxious loveseat. They are not Castiel’s slippers.  

“Make this brief,” Castiel tells him. There is sand in his carpet he needs to remove, and he has laundry to do, and depending on whether he set the washing machine correctly, he may get either clean clothes or a bowl of noodles.  

“I fucked up,” Lucifer tells him as he looks up from his phone. His eyes go wide and he defines maniacs everywhere, and Castiel knows Lucifer did something stupid and consequential that does not involve birthing little devil babies.

“I saw you rolling around a military-reserve beach with some boy.”

“I am an Angel of the Lord, I am allowed to roll wherever I please.”

“And how was that?”

“Scratchy and… abrasive.”

Lucifer hums, and Castiel thinks Lucifer is considering natural alternatives to his monthly chemical peels. Castiel would not recommend El Dorado sands.

“Castiel,” Lucifer reclaims his attention and leads it back to himself gently, “you do understand this is about the boy, right?”

No, Castiel tells him, he did not, “but I do now. What about Dean?”

Lucifer makes a sour face. “He’s a bit-”

“Would you prefer I was rolling around with a human?”

“If he was a human, I would know. I would definitely know,” Lucifer grins widely and gives himself thumbs up: “’Cause I got Satan powers!” he cheers.

It is then that it occurs to Castiel that he lost Lucifer around the time... actually, he lost Lucifer around the time he was born because he still does not understand him. He is lost to Michael, he is lost to the Host of Heaven, and he is lost to Dean, just as Dean is lost to him, but all that reaches the surface of Castiel’s lucid mind is Lucifer’s tirade and he does not understand why his mind ventured off to think of things he never lost.

 But he stands there, lost, and waits for a point to arrive into his mind. One doesn’t. He is still confused and reluctant around Lucifer’s line of accusation some minutes into a tirade about Satanism and Hitler praise.

 _Too far_ , he thinks, even though there is really nothing further than allowing Satan into your house.

Meanwhile, Lucifer is oblivious. He lists horrifying tragedies like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Rwanda, Merlin and Sherlock with enthusiasm, and Castiel wonders what was on his mind to let him get this far with this ‘ideologies.’

“Lucifer,” Castiel stops him because he literally cannot handle the direction of their conversation, “do you have a point about Dean?”

Lucifer rolls his eyes and looks at Castiel, then inside the leopard leather cushion of his loveseat that Castiel begins to suspect came from an actual endangered leopard. He finds in there a full bottle of liquor, shakes it at Castiel, and when Castiel declines, forgoes the glass and downs a quarter of it.

 “Look, you’re kinda weird,” Lucifer tells him, and Castiel feels his eyebrows knit together. “But you’re also… like… there’s something off about you, and I get why Mikey’s interested. I didn’t mean it like that, okay, no, this way too gay and not okay.  Ask Michael. He’ll tell you what I mean.”

Castiel thinks he should ask Dean.

 “So I’m basically I don’t know how I feel about you, so I came here to fuck shit up for you and your lovebird. ‘cause I can,” Lucifer continues, “you should come by Michael’s office and snoop around. He’ll be out by six. Come by, alright? And, hint, look in his recent orders.”

Castiel stares at him, just stares, because there is no polite way of communicating his discontent with such a proposal. 

“Lucifer.”

“What?”

“Lucifer, did Michael put you up to this.”

“Why?”

“Lucifer.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“ _Lucifer_.”

“Scout’s honor, didn’t!”

“Lucifer, this is  _not_  going to end up with me finding Michael in his office after hours, on his desk, naked, covered in sushi, is it?”

Satan opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again, and when words finally come to him, he asks Castiel to elaborate.

Castiel does not.

 “Well, whatever,” the devil scoffs, “you’re not even grateful.”

“Thank you for your help, Lucifer.”

“Okay, now you’re just pissed.”

“Your loveseat is shedding on my carpet,” Castiel confesses.

“Why do you even have a carpet?” Lucifer complains. “Why do you live in an apartment? Why do I live in an apartment? Heaven is just up there. We could just all  _go_. But we don’t. Doesn’t it ever bother you that we don’t?”

When he finally manages to escort his home invader through his front door and lock it with every sigil he knows, Castiel thinks of Dean.

It unsettles him to worry; worry settles in his mind and refuses to leave it like an unwelcome guest breaking into his home and asking questions that shouldn’t be asked. He worries for Dean, and it just isn’t something Castiel does. Castiel doesn’t worry, Castiel doesn’t feel embarrassment, and Castiel definitely doesn’t  _masturbate_.

He realizes with a newly familiar embarrassment that Dean is changing him.

Castiel is not the Castiel that was four days ago.

And Castiel worries now. He worries Lucifer is up to something, he worries Michael had sent him, he worries that Michael did something to him, did something to  _Castiel_ , too, and he worries Dean is at the center of their mutual conspiracy, but he doesn’t  _know_.

There is a secret.

Castiel can taste it. He can feel it in the air, he knows there is something everyone around him is hiding, and he felt it was silly and petty at first, but now he knows  _where_  it is but he can’t quite  _reach_  it.

Dean will not answer his questions, Castiel thinks, but Dean will not reject him if Castiel calls and asks if Dean wants to ‘hang out.’

Balthazar once told Castiel that only desperate men pick up only after one ring.

Dean picks up after one ring.

Castiel swells a little at that.

“Jeez, Cas, you make ‘hang out’ sound like outlaws hangin’ cowboys. Sure, I’m game. Where we goin’?”

Castiel did not think that far ahead. His plans included going to Michael and asking what gave him the right to threaten his friends. Castiel thought his call would not end well. He didn’t really think of anywhere to take him.

“Cas? You still there?”

Castiel tries to think of familiar ground.

“Hello-o? Cas? I can’t hear you, I think the line went dead-”

“Would you like to go see Winter Palace? They repainted it in 2018. Blue. It’s still fresh.”

Dean laughs.

“Cas, are you asking me out to go watch paint dry?”

Castiel considers and decides Dean’s assertion is accurate.

“Cas,” Dean teases.

“Yes?”

“Is this your version of a booty call?”

“I don’t know what that means,” Castiel says, but he has a vague suspicion it’s a euphemism for sex because most of the things Dean says are euphemisms for sex, and when Dean says something that confuses him, it’s somewhat safe to assume that it’s a euphemism for sex.

“It’s a euphemism for sex,” Dean tells him.

“Then no.”

Dean is silent for a moment too long, and it makes Castiel think he wants sex from him.

“I got an idea, then. Come over?”

“Dean,” Castiel says, and hopes Dean can read his mind.

“What?”

“Don’t you have a day job, Dean?”

“I do it at night.”

“Unless I am your job, Dean, you do not do it at night.”

Castiel swells a little inside and thinks he is being exceptionally clever with a euphemism oh his own, and Dean takes a dry minute to come up with an answer.

“You don’t have to ‘Dean’ me in every sentence, y’know,” is Dean’s reply.

Castiel has nothing to say to that, and decides it’s best to rewind the conversation to a point he can expand: “when do you want me to come over, Dean?”

Dean huffs, “okay, now you’re just doing it on purpose.”

“Doing what, Dean?”

Dean laughs and his laughter is a song. Castiel loves the sound. It takes Castiel a second to fly to Kansas, so he wonders what he should do with the rest of the time.

He decides he will decide there.

He decides to fly to Kansas and see if Kansas has any food to fill his wait.

“What’ll you be having, sugar?”

Castiel looks around but sees no menu except prices under “tap” and “non-tap” on the chalkboard.

“Shouldn’t this establishment serve food under a joint food and liquor license?” Castiel asks honestly, and the drunk in the corner of the bar makes a gargling and bitter noise that Castiel does not appreciate.

The bartendress smiles at him and points to the jar of pickles on the counter.

Castiel does not understand, but he knows he should order something, so asks for something colorful with an umbrella in it.

“I’ve always wanted to try something that doesn’t look like dehydrated urine,” he says, and the only two occupants of the bar grin, even the round drunk man with a beard and a seemingly short temper.

“You got one thing right, kid,” he tells Castiel and looks up from his drink. Castiel recognizes him from the day before. He is a good man with a bright soul. But his soul is worn by age and life, and the man looks older than he is, both in his soul and his face. He wears plaid sweat-soaked shirt, his blue and tattered cap lies on the counter next to an empty bottle of whiskey. Castiel does not think one can expel troubles by pissing them out or vomiting, but the man seems to have spent his life attempting this feat.

He will go home and drink there, then die of alcohol poisoning within hours.

“C’mere,  _Umbrella_. ‘Becca, what day’s it?”

“Thursday,” the bartendress tells the man, and the man laughs hoarsely and chokes on his spit.

“Y’sound like him, too. C’mere.”

Castiel accepts something called a Russian Sunrise, pays for it with money he manifests out of thin air, and sits next to the man. ‘Becca” looks worried for a moment, but even she does not think Castiel is in any danger.

“Maybe you shouldn’t drink this heavily,” Castiel says kindly, although he knows his warning will not make a difference.

“Maybe,  _Thursday_ , I’ll get on the table and tap-dance. Don’t tell an old man how t’live his life.”

“You  _have_  lived a life,” Castiel admits, but he isn’t sure that the man is old. He is old in his experiences but not in his life, but it  _was_  a life by all standards. Rich, busy, and sad. Instead of risking being discovered a mind-reading witch (or alike), however, Castiel simply says, “and it was a hard one. God will welcome you into his house.”

The man snorts his drink and doesn’t even notice it go up his nose.

“I knew a kid like you. Not my own. But jus’ like you. All religious crap and miracles.”

“Do you have any children of your own to remember you?”

The man prods at his tattered blue cap and downs the rest of his drink.

“Y’know what, kid? I did. I sure as hell did.”

Castiel can smell a tragedy. It lingers in the air like the scent of an unwashed and greasy body, like the stench of muscles that were stiff and dead and now aren’t. It comes from the man in waves of nauseating regret and bitterness, and Castiel thinks he wants to help this man because there is an air of familiarity around him he cannot quite place. But he cannot help. There is a reaper watching the man already, and Castiel thinks the man will have a lovely afterlife.

“Would you like to tell me about your children?”

The man would not like to tell Castiel anything.

He is angry at the scraps his fortune has dealt him and he takes it out on the glass he holds. He smashes it against the counter. ‘Becca’ looks displeased, and he leaves money on the counter, stumbles through the door of the bar and rubs his fat belly against Dean.

“Jesus,” Dean curses into his dust and ethanol exhaust, “a bit of manners?”

Castiel sees Dean and nods at him, and Dean smiles brightly.

“You’re early,” he says to Castiel.

“I didn’t know what to do with the rest of the hour,” Castiel admits, and Dean laughs a pleasant throaty laugh.

“I mean, you’re forty three years early.”

Castiel looks around, but he was never one to keep up with the current events. He looks at Dean, and Dean understands his silent question, because he whispers “it’s 1970” to Castiel, and Castiel doesn’t think much of his miscalculation. Dean likes this place and time, so Castiel likes it too, by default.

‘Becca’ stares at them, and Castiel reads the surface of her mind. She thinks they are fans of something called ‘Star Trek.’

Castiel does not know what that is.

Dean is about to sit by him when he notices Castiel’s interesting drink and frowns at it. Castiel realizes he’s being terribly rude, catches the woman’s eyes and asks her to get his friend one of the colored umbrella thi-

“How about you just get  _him_  one,” Dean interrupts him coyly. “On me. Tap for me. And keep ‘em coming.”

“Are you sure?” Castiel asks him. “They are called Sunrises but they don’t taste anything like sunrises,” which is true enough. Sunrises taste like ozone and negative ions. Russian Sunrises taste like vitamin C, ice, and bitter sweetness.

Dean chuckles and says, “well, you like ‘em?”

“Yes, they’re quite nice.”

“The second one’s all yours, then,” he says, but Castiel cannot shake the feeling that his umbrellas might be in grave danger. He nods, and when two drinks appear on the counter, Castiel asks the woman about the drunk man.

Unluckily for his curiosity, she does not approve of conspiracy.

Which is more than alright, because Dean loves conspiracy.

“He got out of a wheelchair a week ago,” Dean whispers at Castiel, and the woman cleans the shattered class off the counter in a manner which conveys disapproval. “Dunno who did it, but definitely one of your friends from upstairs-

“T’was a miracle,” the bartendress cuts Dean off, and Castiel pinpoints her southern accent to somewhere in the South. “and don’t you go tellin’ that boy it was no clever surgery, I ain’t seen no one up and goin’ from a cripple to a walker in a day’s time.”

“Right, sure,” Dean tries to pick up his story as if ‘Becca’ stole it from him, “anyway, everything’s going good for a few days, right, I’ve never seen him this sober in my life. And then he-”

Becca pointedly wipes the price on the tap beer from the chalkboard and raises it by a dollar.

“The hell?” Dean complains.

“Stop tellin’ tales that ain’t yours, and I’ll change it back,” she demands.

“He’s a cousin,” Dean points at Castiel as he groans at her, and Castiel reads the surface of Dean’s mind:  _you bitch_ , Dean doesn’t add. “of Jim. The kid on the highway. Here for funeral. Let him know the story.”

“It ain’t Jimmy’s story you’re tellin’”

“Please,” Castiel conveys emotions of remorse because there is a game Dean is playing, and it’s a fun game. “Everyone I know is dead.”

The woman changes her attitude at once, and Castiel wonders if there is a bipolar disorder he should be using his fake doctor credentials to diagnose.

“Knew the boys too, didja sugar?”

Castiel did not know any boys, but he exaggerates and says “not well.”

“Ain’t no surprise, secretive bunch, those two. A shame, losing two step-kids in the same day, imagine the grief, though I can’t imagine no one’s cared much, those two couldn’t hold a job for the life of ‘em. Traveling salesmen. Or mechanics. Some days, deer hunters. Some days bounty hunters, some days jus’ hunters. Bobby never did get his story straight. That’s why he’s drunk himself under the table today, bless his old soul. And you,” she points a rag at Dean, “don’t you run your mouth and tell no muck. He’s a good man.”

“He’s the town drunk,” Dean mouths, and Castiel has to focus on his lips. When he looks into his drink and notices his umbrella is missing from it. “Lives up in the scrap yard. Scares kids with his guns. Plays poker. He say anything rude to you?”

“He was a very nice man.”

The umbrella reappears in Dean’s tall beer glass, and he looks pleased with himself. Castiel takes the second umbrella and places it under the protection of his breast pocket.

There is a sense of inevitability in the bar, it mindless with the texture of lead in aged yellow plastics and untreated wooden barstools. It is perhaps the era, the rigid mentalities and neurotic pacifism on this side of the red curtain, perhaps denial, perhaps simply death, death that will come to a man Castiel would have liked to know.

Dean can see that Castiel is suffocating in it. Dean is cheering him up.

Castiel appreciates it.

“Why don’t you tell me why you called,” Dean nudges him, and Castiel is relieved to leave it in peace. 

 “I called you to see if you were angry with me.”

He feels uneasy when Dean doesn’t say anything for a short while.

In his days of knowing Dean, Castiel learned things about him, things he knows Dean doesn’t know about himself. Dean  _thinks_. Dean thinks a lot, and there were times he refers to himself as ‘stupid’ and means it, but Castiel knows his thoughts are important and clever. Castiel knows wit. He knows dangerous wit, and he knows cleverness, and Dean doesn’t need to think of the physical and mathematical workings of the universe to be clever.

And when Dean broods, he has a tell. Castiel has to cheat and look into his very grace to see it, but no one ever said anything about Castiel being honest.

 “I would very much like to play poker with you,” Castiel says before he even knows Dean’s mind.

Dean remembers himself.

“You’re breakin’ my heart,” Dean says when he emerges from his deep thoughts, “would you think I was mad at yo-”

“Because my friend asked about you.”

Dean pretends he does not understand what Castiel is implying.

Their game of poker will be very enjoyable.

“Did this friend of yours,” Dean teases, “break your  _heart_?”

“I don’t have a heart, Dean, Neither do you. We are angels.”

“Fine,” Dean is at once put off by Castiel’s seriousness, or perhaps he is being kind. “Your ‘friend’… knows about us?” he drains his beer and ‘Becca’ is at once at his side with another one.

Yes, that.

 Castiel wants to approach the subject carefully. He places his hands on his lap and looks at them. He used these hands on Dean, and he remembers every sensation. He put them on his skin and his mouth and his body and inside him, and Dean had let Castiel comfort him in the only manner he knew. Dean knows him. Dean will not be offended.

“Dean,” Castiel still likes to think he is being delicate, “Dean, you are six feet tall, and your uniform requires you to be nude during the workdays. I can bring you a ruler if you would like to know why you are very difficult to miss.”

Dean’s stare becomes very pointed, and ‘Becca’ snorts into a glass she polished twenty two times already. Castiel realizes they have an audience, so much for the woman not liking conspiracy, and he hopes what he said was appropriate.

Dean eventually lowers his face into the palm of his hand and looks at Castiel with a pleasant, glossy and dreamy expression. Castiel fishes the umbrella out of his pocket and drops it into Dean’s beer as compensation.

Dean smiles at him.

“I’m never gonna live this down in this town, y’know. It’s 1970, for Chrissakes.”

“Oh, don’t’ worry ‘bout me, sugar. Didn’t know you were a dancer,” ‘Becca’ tells him across the bar where she was politely pretending not to eavesdrop, “I won’t tell, but lots of nasty folk up here not gonna like that kind of thing. Tell your friend to cool it, though, if he’s gonna come here often. I don’t want no trouble.”

“We will not be trouble,” Castiel says.

“Dude,” Dean says, “you missed the point of that completely.”

 ‘Becca’ just smiles at Castiel kindly and makes him a third thing with an umbrella, and Castiel can’t even remember finishing his second.

“Ignore him, sweetheart,” she tells Castiel, “and go on about the ruler. How big exactly are we talking-”

Dean throws money on the counter, and ‘Becca’ protests when Dean takes the beer glass and the Sunrise glass with him. Dean says she can take the glass rent out of her tip. He leaves no tip.

They are outside. It’s late afternoon and the homeless man tries to interest Castiel with a small bag of marijuana. Castiel refuses it politely, and the man becomes upset with Dean instead, for some reason.

“The end is coming,” he proclaims and throws salt into Dean’s face. Dean curses and tries to get it out of his eye. Castiel helps him, but Dean isn’t as affectionate when he is visible as when he is not, so Castiel stops touching his face and politely thanks the marijuana man for warning them that the queers  _“will burn in the fiery pits of hell until their skin boils off and Satan himself eats their entrails.”_

“Lucifer is my friend,” he tells Dean when they are out of the hostile earshot. “He is the one who made me worried someone harassed you.”

Dean stares at him sideways and drinks his beer as he walks. There must be some kind of law against public drinking during this time period, too, he thinks, because Dean is being protective by failing to return the Sunrise to Castiel.

“Well, you little namedropper you,” he finally says. “He gonna eat my entrails?”

“I don’t think so,” Castiel says honestly, “Lucifer has not been down in Hell for over a thousand years. Demons run it now, but I don’t think there is a famine in hell. Your entrails are safe.”

 “But you trust him?”

“Absolutely not,” Castiel says. “I do not believe a word he says.”

Dean sighs, and while he doesn’t look like he is ready to share anything relevant, he spots a police officer, grabs Castiel by the elbow and pushes him and the drinks they’re holding out of sight.

“Y’know what,” Dean says and Castiel gets a feeling he is about to suggest something Dean-clever, “fuck exposition. Let’s go play poker.”

There is a word ‘strip’ hiding somewhere in Dean’s rude sentence. Castiel does not feel particularly amused, and so he takes his Sunrise from Dean.

“Your ‘idea’ was to steal my idea?” he demands.

“Well… no, I was gonna invite you to my place and make you watch the Duck Dynasty, but then you went all red-shirt  _rainbow_ -shirt at a freakin’ bar in Midwest.”

Castiel squints and considers. “Euphemism for se-”

“No.”

“But why a duck?”

“Because it’s like, okay, so remember in Florida… the TV… quacking… Blathazar… gonna die… Cas? Cas?” 

> “But why a duck?”
> 
> Dean takes Castiel by the shoulders, and Castiel blinks the haze out of his mind. There is something wrong.
> 
> Something always has been.
> 
> How could he be blind to it, all this time?
> 
> Maybe because only four days passed, only four days left.
> 
> “Déjà Vu?” Dean says to Castiel carefully, and Castiel is still standing outside a bar, the marijuana man is now harassing a black woman with derogatory slurs, it’s still Thursday, and the nice man from the bar is still about to die.
> 
> “Yes,” Castiel says. “Dean, there is something terribly wrong.”
> 
> “Dude, easy. Cas. Cas, easy, okay?” he holds Castiel by the shoulders firmly and Castiel stays on the ground only because Dean is grounding him. “Calm down. There. A bench. Sit, man.”
> 
> The dust of Kansas is at its worst near the roads where exhaust fumes and leaky gasoline-greedy cars stir the air and honk into the heat. Castiel’s bench says something profound and profane about whoever sits there, but Castiel tries not to think about it.
> 
> “Dean, I-”
> 
> Dean kisses him, on the lips, softly and wonderfully, and Castiel melts into the Kansas heat and redneck whispers and the shouts of a bigoted marijuana man.
> 
> He almost forgets again, he almost forgets everything when Dean’s hand tangles in his hair and he finds his own hand touching Dean’s cheek. It means something to him that Dean is doing this in a world where the world has the eyes to see them.
> 
> It slips his mind like a pointed arrow of something not quite deadly.
> 
> And arrow of… ducks. A duck formation. It flies over the clear Kansas skies and quacks and drops filth on people’s cars because ducks are free to drop filth wherever they like, and Castiel remembers and pushes Dean away.
> 
> They part with a wet sound.
> 
> “Not your secret, Dean. I know you have a secret. This isn’t about your secret, and don’t ever try to distract me like this because we will  _forget_.”
> 
> “Cas,” Dean looks vary and nervous, and God only knows what Castiel must look like to prompt such alarm in Dean. “Cas, stay.”
> 
> “I am not going anywhere.”
> 
> “You look like you’re about to run,” Dean says firmly.
> 
> “You better run, queers,” someone mumbles, and Castiel realizes this isn’t a conversation they should be having here.
> 
> “I am fine, I need to talk to you about-”
> 
> The marijuana man verbally attacks a lovely old Jewish woman for wearing a Star of David. 
> 
> “Cas, chill, it’s-”
> 
> About a mile away, a liquor store attendant violates policy and sells a clearly intoxicated nice-old-man-with-a-good-soul two bottles of whiskey.
> 
> “Cas-”
> 
> Castiel wills everything to be calm around him.
> 
> And everything around him is calm at once.
> 
> The formation of ducks quacks a faraway melody as they melt over the line of horizon. There is a gentle breeze in Kansas air, it sways the bushes and worries the yellowed leaves of whichever trees can stand the summer scorch of the sun. Dust and ash ride those leaves.
> 
> There is a wind chime in a window of a store that sells antiques and books, and it chimes a soft song, it dances to a rhythm that matches the softness in Castiel’s fingertips. It’s a heartbeat. Dean’s heart beats a rhythmic melody, too, and it’s beautiful that it beats, it’s beautiful that it is predictable and alive and beating.
> 
> “Cas,” Dean whispers, or perhaps he hisses – Castiel isn’t sure – but he knows what he has done to the world around them has scared his friend.
> 
> Castiel does not need to look at what he has done. He feels the ash clog his vessel’s lungs, he smells blood, and he hears no human voices for blocks around them.
> 
> All is ash.
> 
> Reapers gather soundlessly.
> 
>  “You have a temper,” Dean says evenly and passes no judgment with his voice. There is now a distance between them. It’s wide and it feels like a rift Castiel still cannot understand, but he knows it. He knows it across timelines he has not seen and lives he has not lived.
> 
> “Dean, please, for a moment,” Castiel says, “for a moment, Dean Winchester, please forgo my temper and your secret, whatever it is, and tell me why you have a-”
> 
> _Have a…_
> 
> There was something on Castiel’s mind, but it isn’t there now.  

“But why a duck?”

 “Déjà Vu?” Dean laughs a good throaty laugh, and a pair of school girls turn their heads and admire Dean just like Castiel admires him.

“Yes,” Castiel says and shakes his head, “I’ve been meaning to see someone about it. They are getting out of hand. But I was going to ask you about why you always seem to favor ducks.”

Dean shuffles in his spot, hands Castiel his Sunrise and shoves one hand in his pocket. He is awkward in his posture.

 “Because it’s like, okay, don’t laugh at me?” he rubs the back of his neck and the marijuana man stalks away to harass someone else, “so remember in Florida, right? There was a duck. It stalked me, so I let it sleep on, uh, Sam’s TV. And it wasn’t quacking, I think it overheated or something. It was... sick. Yes, sick. Balthazar cured it, but it wasn’t gonna die, totally not, but anyway, it’s a really entertaining pet. So, um. Wanna see my duck?”

“Your duck,” Castiel stares at Dean pointedly, “you are asking me if I want to see your duck?”

“I swear my ‘duck’ is not a euphemism for sex,” Dean promises. “There’s an actual literal duck in my apartment.”

Dean’s heart beats fast with embarrassment, and Castiel knows he is telling the truth.

 

# Devil In The Details (2)

So Dean pretty much got airlifted from the lake in the wee hours of the morning.

Ass-naked.

By Michael.

Personally.

Michael then proceeded to kick his face in.  

It isn’t a particularly humorous story.

Next thing Dean knows is that he’s waking up on the floor of his apartment with Balthazar’s prickly stubble on his face.

“Aaah!” he says very calmly and with a thousand ounces of dignity.

There is an apple-crunch of a camera a foot away from him.

“She awakens!” Balthazar sings, “send it to me too, ‘kay?”

“Oh, I’m sending it to everyone,” Sam moos.

“Sending wha-”

Dean’s phone dings, which is  _somewhere_ , and when Dean checks it later, it will have a picture text of what he will explain to Castiel as Balthazar giving him CPR.

“Why the fuck would you give me CPR,” Dean spits on the side and tries to rub the taste of British asshole from his mouth, “couldn’t you just mojo me?”

“There were legitimate reasons for this,” his traitorous Antichrist brother assures him.

“Speaking of bullshit,” Dean sits up and pats his body parts to make sure everything is as it should be. Everything is there, but a courtesy blanket someone should’ve given him isn’t, “Balthazar, you got a thing to do, really far away from here.”

“I don’t?”

“You do. Go, now. And Antichrist stays with me. We’re playing Q20.”

Sam gives him this  _are-you-kidding-me-right-now_  stare, but Dean gives him  _I’m-in-shit_ stare, and suddenly Sam agrees:

“Yeah, ‘Zar, thanks and sorry, but your thing is really urgent. We’ll see you Friday for beers, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I exist only to heal your personal pricks. Dicks. Ducks, I meant ducks, sorry mate. Sam, you owe me one, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, so come to my flat Sat and try to ‘ _fix’_  my ‘ _WiFi_.’ Except I won’t be there, but if a bloke, say, my brother, stumbles in and asks, you didn’t know that. I’m not trying to get anyone laid, real honest.”

“Balthazar.”

“And by ‘fix’ I mean  _‘fuck.’_ ”

“Balthazar, leave.”

“And by ‘WiFi’ I mean  _‘Gabriel_.’ I don’t even think I have WiFi-”

“Get out,” Sam moos before it gets interesting.

Dean would’ve asked him to stay and elaborate under the elaborate and staying threat of bleach in his breakfast crumpet (or whatever the fuck), but he doesn’t, and Sam knows instantly it’s really bad, and whatever it is, it’ll get them both killed.

“Dean, what did you do?”

That’s the problem, though. To tell Sam is to involve him. To not tell Sam is to make him totally unprepared for when Michel pulls his nine-foot tall baby brother in for questioning  _next_.

Which will happen.

Sam’s practically a magnet for horny archangels.  

There’re literally wanks going on about this.

What’s up with that, anyway.

“I, uh. Give me one minute, I need sweats,”  Dean says and pretends to search for his sweats in the most ridiculous places like under the ashtray they only got so that Balthazar would stop sticking gum under tables. He still sticks gum under the tables. A couple of times, Balthazar even used the gum as adhesive to stick the ashtray under the tables. Why do they even keep the damned ashtray?

Ten of those ‘ _one minute, Sam’_  later, he concludes all privacy sigils are in place and there are no listening devices anywhere.

“Dude. Do you need a tinfoil hat?”

“Sammy,” Dean says gravely, “you better sit down for this one.”

“No, but get this-” Sam starts.

“No, y _ou_  get this. Sam. You have no idea how the fuck I got here, or why your  _friend_  had to revive me by tonguing my  _face_.”

 Sam laughs at him in bitchy girlish giggles, except he’s Sam, so his laughter is less like laughter and more like lustful mating calls of a barely-pubescent moosette.

Come to think of it, maybe archangels are just naturally attracted by these lustful mating calls of barely-pubescent moosettes Sam’s been making all his life.

With Sam’s track record, and the fact that archangels are really fucking weird, that’s could actually be it.  

“That’s ‘cause you blacked out. You got smashed and got into a bar brawl. With those sketchy Japanese sumo cupids. Balthazar had to revive you. You were practically dead.”

“Okay. Okay, Sam?” Dean hisses in conspiracy, “swear to me you won’t go and get the tinfoil, but those memories are fake and implanted into our heads by the archangels.”

Sam goes and gets the tinfoil.

“Sam, damn it, I’m serious.”

“Yeah, no, I believe you, implanted memories, gotcha. Do you want a pointy antennae tip on your hat, or do I make it like a helmet?”

Sam sucks at the art of crafting tinfoil hats. The antennae looks like a wrinkly silver dildo.

“I got roughed up by Michael,” Dean admits and yanks the foil roll from Sam’s giant and awkward hands. He minds the edges and rips off a square, folds it into a crude shape and avoids meeting Sam’s eyes. “He said he’d put it into your head that Balthazar rescued me from some bar fight, an’ I better roll with it or he’ll rip my face off. Again. Said I should keep my trap shut about it. So this is me. Keepin’ my trap shut about it.”

 Sam does that ungraceful open-mouthed frowny face thing where the corners of his lips are pointing downwards and his lower teeth are showing. In Dean’s opinion, it’s very un-lady like.

“Well,” his uncivilized brother watches Dean mold the foil into a tasteful shape, “what did Michael want with you? To go through all this trouble, I mean?”

Dean twists the tips of his new silver crown and mutters something he can’t even hear himself.

“What?”

“Eggs,” Dean mutters again.

“Don’t you dare follow that with ter-mi-nate.”

Dean stares at Sam and fights an urge to say _‘I don’t understand that reference.’_

“Ex, Sam. Ex.”

“Michael’s your ex? You got beat up by an angry ex?” Sam says and just watches him like this is totally plausible and perfectly normal and even to be expected, from Dean, because Dean is anything other than the epitome of a gentleman. And what, if the archangels have a thing for  _one_  Winchester, it does not automatically mean they’ll have a thing for the  _other_  Winchester, no thank you, fuck you.

 “Not my ex, okay? Cas’ ex.”

Sam stares at him.

“Please tell me you’re talking about Cassie,” he drones.

“Cassie’s dead, you asshole,” Dean swats at him with his royal 100% pure Tinfoilium crown.

“Yeah. I’m really hoping you’re having some sort of psychotic breakdown here and hallucinating memory implants and your dead-ex-girlfriend-Cassie  _instead of fucking Castiel from your assignment_.”

Dean says nothing to that, so Sam, bless his soul, stares at him for a moment, then decides sitting the fuck down was probably a great freakin’ idea.

He lifts his ass and plants it on the kitchen counter, but it's a perfectly normal counter sized for humans, so Sam's hoofs touch the ground like he's sitting on a damn moose chair.

“First thing’s first,” Sam says seriously, “we need to write this down and send it out to M. Night Shyamalan. This is gold. We’re rich. You know what would be better? If you stabbed yourself with a love arrow for Castiel, to boot, that would be epic.”

Dean says nothing to that.

“You aren’t serious,” Sam ignites his round and beady moose eyes and shoots lasers at Dean.

“I’m serious,” Dean deadpans.

“You,” Sam deadpans, “are the stupidest stupid person in the world.”

They sit like that for a while, soaking up bad vibes and allowing their predicaments to sink in and settle like gunk on the bottom of a glass of orange juice.

 “This will end badly,” Sam warns him. “I’ll help you with whatever you need, but it will end badly. And you should break it off and do your job. What did Michael want, before he busted you up?”

“To break it off and do my job.”

Dean’s duck emerges from wherever it was lurking, all regal-looking. It waddles around and pecks on Sam’s pants, in a gentle attention-craving sort of manner, not like with Dean when it tries to amputate both of Dean’s legs. Sam envelops the duck’s round, fat sides with his giant fingers and picks it up to his lap. It nests on his legs, content, and Sam pets it.

 “Yeah. And Dean, before you go on and have a crisis about it? You’re not gonna do it.”

“What?”

“You’re gonna go on a crisis,” Sam tells him like he  _knows_  him, and he probably does, “about how it’s gonna be best for everyone if you break it off and do your job. And then you’ll try it for a while, break a heart or two, fuck up everything, and it’ll be really bad and probably too late, but at the end of the day you won’t actually follow through with breaking it off, not really. So don’t do that. Do something else this time.”

“Put the duck away, you look ridiculous,” Dean frowns and Sam sets the feathery hell-beast to the ground. “And what you mean, ‘this time?’”

“I didn’t say ‘this time.’ And love poison, really? You could get that cured, you know.”

It pricks at Dean’s heart in a non-humorous way, although their banter took a sharp turn off the funny road a long while ago, around the time Castiel entered it with his soft facial expressions and harshly honest words. When Castiel warmed his way into Dean’s heart, or maybe wormed his way in, Dean still isn’t sure, but it is a lovely and rare emotion, to love, be this love a consequence of heart’s matter or bitter love poison.

Heart’s matters hardly matter, however, to someone ungrateful and spoiled and cherished and loved, and maybe that’s how Castiel would feel should he find out Dean’s love for him isn’t exactly genuine – or, should he find out Dean has love for him at all.

But it isn’t in his heart to learn to fall out of love with Castiel because fate will look unkindly on him.

The honest truth of it is that Dean stabbed himself with a love arrow meant for someone else.

And it isn’t perfect, but hell fiends can crawl their way up from the flaming asshole of hell and kill him dead if Dean ever felt anything like being in love the way he’s in love right then and there.

And it’s worth it, a thousand lives of misery are worth it, for this, to be in love and not give a shit. It’s a good thing. His love is a good thing.

And there isn’t anything that’ll convince him a  _‘cure’_  from this wonderful and happy feeling is what he fucking needs, because it’s a good thing. It’s Dean’s Good Thing.

“And good things don’t just happen,” Dean concludes his substantially shortened and aesthetically-censored tirade.

“Maybe good things do happen,” his philosophical brother philosophizes. “Maybe the time you get to spend with Castiel is your good thing.”

Cue his phone ringing.

Sam looks at him with pitying jealousy.

“We’ll talk about this later, go fix some WiFi,” Dean shoos him away and picks up.

“Dean, do you want to ‘hang’ with me by a saloon in Midwest?”

Dean laughs, because Cas sounds just so fucking serious, no  _‘hello’_  or anything, just  _“can I interest you in buying a very scary vacuum cleaner, sir?’_ and Dean wonders what he’s done in a previous life to deserve four days of this bliss.

* * *

“You seriously just promised me poker and sex, and now you’re taking me to work again,  _Caaas_ ,” Dean whines and Cas drags him by the hand across time.

They don’t go far. Dean’s no alien kidnapper with a blue Porta-Potty, but his time radar isn’t off enough to notice they’re still stuck in the 1970s.

And now they’re in Lebanon.

And try as Dean might, there’s seriously nothing funny about Lebanon.

“Strange,” Cas says and looks around, “I was aiming for Lebanon in Kansas.”

He tries again. Buildings get shelled and rebuilt, stuff happens, time hops fourty-three years ahead, but they’re still in Lebanon-Lebanon, not Kansas-Lebanon.

“Well, buddy,” Dean winks at him and jerks him closer, “the universe’s trying to tell you something.”

“Trying to tell me what, Dean?” Cas is frustrated, like he’s trying to catch something in his mind, but he’s Wile E. Coyote, and so when he asks Dean to help him identify where they are, Dean rolls his eyes and looks around.

The nearest building says ‘A Bunch of Arabic Letters HOTEL.’

 “We’re near some hotel,” he says, “and fuck me if that ain’t a sign from God. Actually, fuck me anyway.”

So here’s the thing.

This is Cas _tiel._

And Cas _tiel_  already forgot all about missing his destination by about two continents and three decades, because lo and behold, there it is, in all its gold and ruby glory, shining royal light on all its disciples.

 A Lebanese MacDonald’s.

 And Cas is already making a beeline for it.

“Cas,” Dean tries to jerk his hand again, “Cas, there’s a hotel. Right there. Can’t we just-”

“What hotel,” Cas mutters and throws lustful looks at people walking out of the red castle with perky little brown bags of food.

Dean looks at the hotel signage.

بط HOTEL, it says.

 “Squiggly Line with a Dot on the Bottom Hotel,” Dean says.

“Sounds lovely,” Cas won’t even look Dean’s way.

So this is how Dean ends up lying half-naked on a hotel bed, lying to Castiel about how absolutely fascinating Lebanese Happy Meal toys are.

“The blue pony with a rainbow mane reminds me of you,” Cas says, and Dean’s sure somewhere in the corner of the vast and sponge-like pane of existence that is Castiel’s mind, somewhere in there, Cas thinks that what he just said was terribly romantic.

Dean laughs.

The pony, the burgers, the damn Happy Meal Cas probably stole from a kid, the hotel room they broke into – it is, all of it, so Castiel, that Dean can’t imagine himself being this forgiving with anyone else.

And yet, Cas just sits there, with his shoes on the bed, a few layers of clothing lighter but a few burgers heavier, like this is  _normal_ , like everything is as it should be, like being this damn happy just to be near each other and ignore all consequences for the sake of their happiness is  _normal_.

Love is like this, Dean thinks.

Love is like a squiggly line with a dot on the bottom, all tangled and impossible to read, and nothing about it is certain except its existence. The dot at the bottom is doubt, disconnected doubt, doubt that love is not mutual.

Not doubt, no, it’s no longer doubt in Dean’s sober mind.

Dean’s blessed with cupid poison, which is a big and fat I LOVE YOU CASTIEL sign pretty much on his forehead.

He’s been this glossy-eyed drooling mess for days, and it was pretty much first-sight kind of deal.

He’s not stupid enough to think the same applied to Castiel the Angel of the Lord and Boyfriend of Freakin’ Michael. Open bracket how the fuck did he not see that one coming close bracket.

Because really, Dean’s four days of entertaining Cas are probably nothing in light of the eternity Cas spent in the arms of an archangel who loved him and adored him and made him dinners, and Dean can’t live up to that, he’s obviously not good enough, because that’s how it usually goes, and then Dean’s supposed to do something really stupid and heart-breaking around the time he realizes he’s not good enough, because that’s  _also_  how it usually goes, and then there’s self-deprecation and misery and a slow and painful getting-back-together and Cas is taking his shirt off.

Repeat, Cas is taking his shirt off.

Abort self-deprecation.

“Does this help?” Cas asks him with that gorgeous whiskey burn in his voice, and then shrugs out of his shirt. There is a fry hanging from his pink lips. His posture is like he’s straight out of some kinky boarding school.

And then Dean’s brain short-circuits.

 Cas keeps the tie.

“Wha?” he swallows and lifts his chin up to at least make it look like he’s looking Cas in the face, but his eyes are stuck and he can’t quite move them up.

“Does this help you keep your mind free of dark and stupid things?”

“A-hah, definitely,” Dean says and swallows, then his lungs huff out air and he snorts, then again, and again, until he’s arching his back against hotel covers, laughing and laughing and Cas puts his food away and climbs on top of him, smiling, and Dean thinks this is the best thing in the world, and chocolate can go and fuck itself to make room for Dean and Cas, laughing together.

Cas’s still smiling down at him, tilting his head in a gentle question and all, and Dean’s still chuckling like a maniac and reaching to touch short stubble with his fingers and appreciate how scratchy and cool it is.

“Man,” Dean titters, “you are  _something_.”

“Something like what?”

“Something like  _you_.”

“Dean,” Cas says without really having a point, and Dean allows himself to touch stubble and skin. He drinks in Castiel’s whiskey voice like its real liquor, soothing and intoxicating, safe and good, and plentiful as it talks nonsense to him and kisses him, nonsense about sirens and impalas and dead hunters and dead junkies, drunks and accounting and the beauty of the world and the beauty of their hands on each other.

“Dean, I’m losing my mind,” Castiel whispers when Dean slides a hand through and unzipped fly of dress trousers and pulls Castiel’s gorgeous and half-hard cock out, presses it to his own and grinds them together lazily.

“Hmm?” Dean purrs and brushes his lips against scratchy stubble and savors the friction as he runs his lips down Cas’ shivering neck.

“Dean, something is terribly wrong with my memories of you.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Let's play spot-that-plot.
> 
> 2\. They bang in next chapter. That's all you wanted to hear, isn't it?
> 
> 3\. Super special thanks to **Valyria** , **Axephiel** and **Pappy** for commenting on the last chapter. Also thanks to _everyone_ who reads this story. I super appreciate y'all.  <3


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